


Random prompt fics and short fics

by prepare4trouble



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alcohol, Alexsandr Kallus - Freeform, Arguing, Bad Flirting, Badly, Blind Kanan Jarrus, Body Swap, But not that much, Caleb asks a lot of questions, Chopper goes a little crazy, Darkness, Drinking, Drunkenness, F/M, Family Reunions, First Kiss, Flirting, Gen, Grief, Haircuts, Happy Ending, Hera hates it, Hera is easily creeped out, Hera is such a space mom, Hera likes to play with Kanan's hair, Hera thinks hair is weird, Jedi, Jedi Temple, Jedi Training, Kallus' name, Kanan cuts his own hair, Kanan has a bad day, Kanan is afraid of clones, Kanan is devious, Kanan is not drunk, Lothal, Old Friends, Post-Series, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Quarantine, Quilting, Reunions, Sabine cuts hair, Sabine has a bad day, Sticky smelly gunk makes haircut a necessity, Subterfuge, Youngling Caleb, Zeb and Ezra are a rude audience, but not often, but she likes it anyway, chopper gets a bath, even when she is a space dad, ezra can't read, honestly, mentions of the Death Star, mentions of the destruction of Alderaan, oil bath, post family reunion and farewell, prosthetic eyes, shameless rip-off of Red Dwarf, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2018-11-22 03:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 25,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11371659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: A collection of stories ranging from completely AU weirdness to episode tags to speculation based on rumor, fan theory and stuff we've seen in the trailer.  These stories are based mainly on prompts given to me here and on Tumblr, and if you have anything you've like to see, let me know.Most recent story: Lost and Found - Hera is given something she had believed long lost to her.





	1. Fighting

**Author's Note:**

> Fighting, prompt was as follows:  
> Anon said _"I wish you would write a fic where Hera and Kanan have a serious diagreement and others (I don't really mind who, it can be any onlookers from the Ghost crew to Hondo or Inquisitors or whoever) are super uncomfortable about it bc they're the ORIGINAL SHIP HERE SERIOUSLY stop fighting and kiss okay? Bonus if Ezra is the only one who is super cool about it. What say you? XD"_

“Are they still at it?”

Sabine looked worried.  She was biting her nails as she strained to hear what was being said on the other side of the wall.

Ezra frowned, she seemed far more bothered by this than made sense.  “I dunno.  I guess so?”

Sabine tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind her ear.  “I don’t understand,” she said.  “Why are they doing this?  It’s  _Hera and Kanan_ ; they don’t fight!  I mean, not with each other, anyway.”

It was true, during the time he had been with the Ghost crew, Ezra had witnessed disagreements, differences of opinion, he had seen both of them frown or roll their eyes at something the other had said, but he had never seen anything on this scale.

“I mean,” Sabine continued.  She got to her feet and began to pace back and forth across the room.  “How long has it been now?”

Honestly, he wasn’t sure.  “An hour, maybe?” He suggested.

“Should we go in there?  Maybe there’s something we could do?”

Ezra shook his head vehemently.  “No way I’m getting in the middle of that,” he told her.  “What are they even fighting about anyway?”

“I don’t know.  I wasn’t there for the start of it.”

Ezra shrugged.  “People fight.  They’ll stop eventually.  Hey, why don’t we go for a walk or something?  Get out of their way.”

Sabine frowned hesitantly.  “Sure, I guess,” she said.

* * *

 

“Have they gone?” Hera asked.

Kanan was quiet for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side as though listening as he reached out using the Force to check on the whereabouts of the rest of the crew.  Chopper and Zeb had left earlier, reluctantly roped into helping out with something around the base.  Sabine and Ezra had shown no signs of leaving at all.

He nodded.  “Coast is clear,” he confirmed.  “Finally.  I thought they were never going to leave.”

Hera sighed.  “You don’t think that was a little mean, do you?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Kanan told her.  He stretched out on the bed and grinned a little wickedly.  “So, I figure they’ll be at least a couple of hours.  We have the ship to ourselves for this first time in years.  What do you want to do?”


	2. Swap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wish you would write a fic where weird Force reasons make the ghost crew swap bodies. It's probably temporary but they might not know that."
> 
> Incidentally, this is one of the more confusing things I've even written!

“Well that was weird,” Sabine said, after the wave of disorientation had passed.  What was weirder was the way her voice sounded wrong inside her own head.  What was weirder  _still_  was glancing across the room and seeing herself.

Also, that hair color was looking a bit tired, it was time to re-dye it.  Or maybe even choose a new shade.

“Yeah, I’ll say,” said the person that looked like her.  They glanced down at their… her… hands and wiggled the fingers a little.  “Cool,” they said.

Sabine narrowed her eyes.  “Ezra, you’d better give that back in as good condition as you found it.”

“Relax,” he said.  “It’s only supposed to last a few minutes.  How much damage can I do in a few minutes?”

“I dunno,” said the person who looked like Hera.  The tone of voice sounded very much like Kanan.  “Probably quite a bit, knowing you…”

The person who looked like Kanan was sitting on the floor, the position that Kanan had taken when they had been told what was about to happen.  Actually, Sabine thought that might have been a sensible course of action for them all to take, she hadn’t realized how disorienting it was going to be.  She didn't imagine not being able to see would make it any easier.

Or, maybe it would, because looking at herself like that was incredibly strange.

Hera’s face looked down at the person in Kanan’s body, and then dropped to the ground by their side.  “It’s okay,” they said, and took Kanan’s hand.

“I know,” Kanan’s voice replied.  They didn’t sound worried, but they squeezed his hand in response and smiled.  Hera, she assumed.  That was good, it was slightly less confusing to have swapped back and forth like that, rather than randomly.  Of course, that left Zeb and…

She glanced over to where Zeb had been standing, just in time to see him stick a foot out in front of her own body as Ezra began to walk across the room.  Ezra toppled forward and landed in a heap on the floor.  Zeb… Chopper… laughed loudly, then glanced around the room as though to see whether anybody else thought it was funny.

Sabine glared at him then hurried forward to help Ezra to his… to  _her_  feet.  This was getting more confusing by the second.  Unaccustomed to the length of the legs she was wearing, she tripped over nothing, and landed in a similar heap on the floor.

Chopper’s body let out an unintelligible string of nonsense, then Zeb propelled himself forward into Zeb’s leg, ramming him hard enough to make him cry out in pain.  Luckily, Zeb didn’t seem to know how to operate Chopper’s electro-prod.  That, or he didn’t want to shock his own body.

“Okay, that’s  _enough_ ,” called Hera, from her position on the ground.  She disentangled her hand from Kanan’s.  He looked up at her through Hera’s eyes as she climbed to her feet.  “Everybody sit down!” she said.

Ezra glanced around, and smirked.  “We’ve mostly kinda… fallen down already,” he said.

Hera sighed and folded her arms.  Zeb rammed Chopper again until he got the message and awkwardly lowered Zeb’s body onto the ground.

“Well… good,” Hera said, gritting her teeth in exasperation.  “Stay there.  We’re going to wait this out without doing ourselves any more damage, okay?”

Chopper’s body let out another stream of nonsense, apparently Zeb couldn’t speak Chopper’s language any more than he could understand it, but then settled down too.

“Good,” Hera said.  “Now, stay there.  It’ll be over soon.”  She, too, sat back down on the ground, and reached for Kanan’s hand again.

Sabine looked around the room.  Her own body still sprawled on the floor, she imagined that she, in Ezra’s body, didn’t look any less ridiculous.  Chopper looked like he didn’t know how to use Zeb’s arms and legs, while Zeb was moving Chopper’s body back and forth, minuscule movements, but each one bumping into Zeb’s body.  She didn’t know whether he was doing it on purpose, but the whole scene was hilarious.

It started as a tiny giggle, but once she had started, she couldn’t stop.  The laughter grew louder and more intense until her… Ezra’s… entire body was shaking.  She was vaguely aware of the others joining in, but she could barely see for the tears of laughter blurring her vision.

She was still laughing when she realized she was in her own body again.


	3. Impromptu Haircut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I wish you would write a fic where something gets stuck in Kanan's hair while on a mission or something and the only way to get it out is to cut his hair and then the rest of the crew have mini mental breakdowns because Kanan's! Hair! Is! Different! Meanwhile Kanan is being his usual Kanan self about the whole thing."_
> 
> Okay, will do!

“It… doesn’t look  _so_  bad…”

Kanan frowned.  His hair was hanging loose, freed from its usual ponytail.  That alone felt strange.  It moved with every tilt and turn of his head; he could feel the breeze shifting the individual strands in a way that he hadn’t felt in years.

Experimentally, he reached up and touched his head, allowing his fingers to explore what remained of his hair.  It covered his ears, and at the back it came down to just below his hairline.  It felt a little uneven, hastily cut, the front was trying to hang down in bangs, but was a little too long to do so.  He tilted his head backward and shook it, allowing the hair to fall into place at the sides of his face.  Just because he couldn’t see didn’t mean he wanted hair in his eyes.

“It’ll grow back,” Sabine assured him.  She sounded nervous, like she expected him to be angry, or upset.

Kanan smiled in her general direction, “I know.  It’s fine, Sabine.  Thank you.”

The lump of whatever-it-had-been still stank from down on the ground.  Kanan attempted to kick a little dirt over it to disguise the stench, but it did little good.  He took a few steps away from it, careful not to accidentally step into it.  He’d already lost a perfectly good ponytail, he wasn’t about to have to throw out his boots too.

He attempted to gather up what was left of his hair, just checking on how easy it would be to tie it back.  The band he used had been contaminated, and lay on the ground with his hair.  It didn’t matter anyway, the remaining hair was just too short; it slipped from his fingers and fell back into place handing loose around his face and ears.  Apparently, he was just going to have to get used to wearing it loose for a while.

“Sorry,” Sabine told him.  “I might’ve been able to get away with leaving it a bit longer, but I didn’t want to get any of that stuff on my fingers.  Most of it’ll probably tie back in a couple of months.”

The ‘stuff’ she was referring to had been the noxious smelling sticky substance that had been fired at him, according to Ezra, from the center of a plant as they walked past.  It had stuck on contact, and resisted any and all attempts to get it out.  In fact, anything that made contact with it had stuck too, resulting in a giant ball of stinking… something, on the back of his head.

“Honestly, Sabine, it’s fine.  I’d have happily let you  _shave_  it if you had to.  I’m just grateful you were able to stand being close enough to me to cut it out.  I have a feeling if I’d done it myself…” he tailed off, leaving the rest to her imagination.

“Yeah, good point.  You’re lucky I’ve got so much experience dealing with noxious chemicals.  Some explosives are pretty stinky too, you know.  Nothing like that, though.  Honestly, if we could turn it into a weapon we defeat the Empire by this time next week.”  He heard a smile in her voice, then she sighed.  “Ugh.  I’m going to have to neaten that up when we get back to the Ghost.  I just noticed, one side’s longer than the other.”

Kanan shrugged.  “Doesn’t bother me.”

“Yeah, well you’re not gonna have to look at it, are you?  C’mon, lets get back.”

She headed toward the Phantom.  Kanan followed after her.

He was met by a collective gasp of surprise as he entered the ship, followed by a stream of binary laughter.

“Wow,” Ezra said.  “It’s, uh… different.”

From Sabine’s direction, he felt a stab of anger through the Force.  “I’m going to neaten it up when we get home,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s probably for the best,” Ezra said.  “But hey, at least you don’t stink anymore.”  He sniffed the air deeply.  “Much.”

Zeb chuckled.  “You kinda look like the kid,” he said.  “Well, a year or so ago, if he had a beard, and a different color hair, and…”

“Hey, I looked  _nothing_  like that!” Ezra said indignantly.

Kanan touched his hair again, feeling a little self-conscious.

“When do you think it’ll grow back?” Ezra asked.  “I mean, no offense, but you look kinda… I mean… Help me out here, Zeb.”

“He looks fine,” Hera supplied instead.  She stepped a little closer, and ran her fingers through his new, shorter hair, combing it through to the ends, brushing it to one side, and then to the other, and then allowing her fingertips to briefly caress his scalp.

Kanan smiled.  At least  _someone_  wasn’t laughing at him, or apologizing for the cut.

“It  _will_  grow back though, won’t it?” she asked, sounding oddly worried at the prospect that it might not.

Kanan frowned.  Twi’leks didn’t have hair, of course, but she had been around him long enough to know how it worked.  It couldn’t look so bad that she needed that reassurance, surely?

The first thing he was going to do when he got back to base was ask Rex for a slightly more objective opinion.  He probably wasn’t going to get one, but he could still ask.  “Yes,” he assured her through gritted teeth.  “I promise it’s going to grow back.”

Next time they visited a world where he didn’t know what to expect, he was going to wear a hood.


	4. Impromptu Haircut: before the cut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Would you mind writing a prequel to your Kanan haircut fic about Sabine's thoughts while giving the actual haircut?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I failed at having this take place during the cut, and it ended up being mostly before. Close enough though? Hopefully :-)

Ezra took a deep, gulping breath as he emerged from the Phantom.  Sabine watched, not bothering to disguise her irritation, as he covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, jogged quickly over to her, thrust the pair of scissors in her direction, and then backed away quickly.

“It’s not  _that_  bad,” she muttered half under her breath.

“Yeah, it is,” Kanan told her.

He was right.  Honestly, she was surprised Ezra hadn’t floated them over using the Force to avoid coming too close.  It was what she would have done, if she were him.

“Don’t defend him,” Sabine said.  “If we have to smell it, why should they all get away with it?”

“Common sense?” Zeb suggested.  He had taken a seat on the drop-down door to the Phantom, and looked like he was enjoying the show.  Ezra sat down next to him, while Hera stood a little to the side, looking spectacularly unimpressed with the whole situation.

Sabine looked down at the scissors.  They had been taken from the medical kit they kept aboard the Phantom, and their primary function was supposed to be cutting bandages, maybe cutting clothing if necessary.  They were sharp enough, but not exactly the precision tools that were needed for this job.

Still, at least it wasn’t a lightsaber.  That had been Kanan’s first suggestion, though he hadn’t looked comfortable at the idea.  Of course, if they  _had_  been forced to do that, at least she wouldn’t have been the one stuck with the job.

She eyed the gunk with distaste.  It was a translucent shade of pale green, with… things… suspended inside it.  It had struck Kanan on the back of the head as they walked by, sticking instantly to his hair.  To make matters worse, it had even stuck to the band he used to tie it back, and a little above it too.  It had defied any and all attempts to remove it; luckily nobody had wanted to touch it with their fingers, but when Hera had tried to wipe it away, the leaf she had used had stuck there too, and still remained in place like some kind of all-natural hair accessory.  Water had ran off the substance with no effect whatsoever.  It was simply not going to move.

There was a chance it might have washed out with shampoo, but nobody had anticipated the need for an emergency hair-wash when they had packed for the mission.  Anyway, given its resistance to everything, she didn’t think it was likely.  Anyway, there was no way Kanan was going to be allowed back aboard the Phantom, let alone the Ghost, without the stuff removed from his hair.

Unfortunately, the only way they were going to be able to do that, was cut it out, and that meant cutting the hair too.

Sabine raised the scissors slowly and her hand trembled slightly as she approached the hair, as though protesting at the action she was forcing it to perform.  She couldn’t take a deep breath as she normally would, to help steel herself;  The smell was so bad that even without breathing through her nose at all, she was still fighting the urge to retch, the odor permeated the air all around them, and she could taste it on her tongue with every shallow inhalation.

She turned away, into the breeze.  It made it only slightly more tolerable.  This was going to go badly wrong.  “Why do  _I_  have to be the one to do this?”  She asked.  It wasn’t like there had been a discussion, or a vote, it had simply been assumed.

“You do have experience,” Kanan reminded her.  He spoke softly as he, too, tried not to breathe too deeply.  Sabine felt for him, at least she and the others could move away to escape it, Kanan had no such option. He had been forced to walk back to the ship alone while the rest of the crew gave him a wide berth.

“Not really,” Sabine told him.  “I dye my own hair, but I don’t usually cut it myself.  I find someone who can do it for me.”  Even in the middle of a rebellion, you encountered people with unexpected skills.  “You don’t tell a hairdresser to set an explosive charge,” she added, “so why would you ask me to cut hair?”

“Ezra asked you,” Zeb reminded her, from his safe distance.

“Yeah, well that’s Ezra.  No offense Ezra.  Anyway, his was easy.”

“This’ll be easy too,” Kanan assured her.  “All you’re doing is cutting the stuff out, it doesn’t have to look good, it just has to be clean, or Hera isn’t going to allow me back into the Phantom.”

“Yeah, it’ll be easy,” Zeb said, in a way that was either supposed to be encouraging or mocking, she couldn’t work out which.  Ezra nodded emphatically in agreement.  He was holding his nose with one hand while fanning the other theatrically in front of his face.

Sabine glared.  “If it’s so easy, maybe you should do it.”

Zeb shook his head, holding up both hands, palms outward.  “Those tiny scissors weren’t designed for my hands.”

“Hera?” Sabine tried.  It was a long-shot, but the last thing she wanted was for her to claim later that of course she would have done it, if someone had only asked her.

Hera was gone.

“She went into the ship,” Ezra explained.

“Making preparations for take-off,” added Zeb.

There weren’t really any preparations to make.  Hera was hiding, either from the smell, or from the possibility of being asked to help.  Or, more likely, from having to watch Kanan be parted from his hair.

“Hera doesn’t have hair,” Ezra pointed out.  “She’s probably the last person you should ask.  Well, except for Chopper maybe.”

That just left Ezra.  And that wasn’t going to happen, for so many reasons.

Kanan turned to face her.  He placed a hand on her arm.  “It’s fine, Sabine.  I trust you.”

“You might not, if you’d seen it,” she muttered.

Kanan shrugged.  “Well I haven’t, and I’m not going to.  But I  _can_  smell it, so seriously, do your worst.”  He paused, and grimaced.  “But not  _actually_  your worst, if you can help it.”

Sabine frowned.  She wasn’t going to be able to get out of it.  “Okay, you asked for it,” she said.  She glanced over at Ezra and Zeb, who had been joined now by Chopper.  “You all need to go inside,” she told them.  “I’m  _not_  doing this with an audience.”

For a moment, she thought she was going to have an argument on her hands, but to her surprise, the three of them filed inside silently.  They were probably as reluctant to see this happen as she was.  She swallowed, and raised the scissors again. She placed one blade at either side of a small section of hair, and resisted the urge to close her eyes as she made the first cut.  


	5. Impromptu Haircut: Rex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I have to say I'm loving your Kanan haircut story, would you mind continuing it? Like maybe Kanan asking for Rex's opinion (from Rex's pov) or something with Hera?"_

“Did you let Ezra play with scissors again?” Rex asked.  He leaned heavily against the wall and made sure the grin was audible in his voice.

Kanan ran his fingers self-consciously through his strange new style and shrugged.  “Something like that,” he said.

Rex chuckled to himself.  “Don’t worry, it’ll grow back,” he said.

“Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me,” Kanan replied.  “How bad is it, really?  All I get is laughter from Ezra and Zeb, Sabine’s just assures me it’ll grow back, and Hera tells me it looks fine.”  He ran his fingers through the hair again, then clenched his hand into a fist and pulled it down to his side as though deliberately forcing himself to stop touching it.

“What about that crazy droid of yours?” Rex asked.

Kanan grimaced.  “Chopper’s been alternating between laughing hysterically, and avoiding me completely.  I can’t get a straight answer out of anybody.  I’m trying not to care, but it isn’t easy when everyone keeps making such a big deal out of it.”

Rex leaned in to get a better look.  The hair appeared to have been hacked at random with either a knife, or something else not really designed for the job.  It was longer in the front than the back, where it looked almost as though it had been cut around the top of the band he used — or had used to use — to tie it back.  It would grow back, but it would be some time before it was long enough to be worn in the style Kanan was accustomed to.

Kanan touched his hair again; it was as though he couldn’t leave it alone.  Strange, that he had managed to develop a nervous habit practically overnight.  Rex wondered whether it was in fact an older habit than that, something from before, a tell that he had figured out a way to suppress.

“Well?” Kanan asked.  “Come on, Rex, you were honest with me before.”

When everybody had been either dodging the question or replying with platitudes and false assurances, Rex had given a straight and honest answer to a question about Kanan’s appearance once before, in the aftermath of the mess that had been Malachor.  He had still been bitter over the loss of Ahsoka, and he hadn’t pulled any punches, and Kanan had respected him for it, even if Rex had felt sorry afterward.

He took a deep breath and tried to choose his words carefully.  “It’s just hair,” he said.  “You’ve lost a lot worse than that.  That’s not to say it doesn’t look bad — it does.  It looks a bit like you hacked at it yourself with a blunt knife.  Hey, that’s not what you did, is it?”

Kanan smiled briefly as he shook his head.

“If I were you,” Rex continued, “I’d find someone who knows their way around a pair of scissors and get them to neaten it up, at least.  That, or get used to the sound of laughter wherever you go.”

Kanan raised a hand to touch it again, but stopped it half-way to his head.  He clasped both hands together, each one preventing the other from exploring the cut.  “Thanks,” he said, not sounding particularly thankful.

“So what did happen?  I’m assuming it wasn’t really Ezra, unless it’s some new Force-training technique you’ve come up with.”  He chuckled.  “Is that what happened to his hair too?”

“It was Sabine, actually,” Kanan told him.  “And believe it or not, this was the best option we had.”

Rex nodded.  “Oh, I believe it.”  There was no way Hera would have allowed it otherwise.  “You know,” he added, “there is another option, if you don’t want to have to wait for it to grow back.”

“What’s that?” Kanan asked him.  He was still holding his hands together to keep him from touching his hair.

Barely noticing what he was doing, Rex reached up and ran his own hand over the smooth surface of his head.  “A good sharp razor and a handful of shaving foam,” he said.  “It’ll fix that nervous habit of yours at the very least.  And I always wanted to be a style icon.”

Kanan laughed.  “I’ll bear that in mind as a last resort,” he said.

Rex doubted it.  There was no way Hera would allow that either.


	6. impromptu Haircut: Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I have a confession: the request for the Kanan haircut story, and it's prequel and sequel were all made by the same person, me. I made the first request because I have a weird obsession with haircuts (I don't know when, why or how it started) and I liked the fic so much I wanted more. I still do, something with Hera, but if I'm bugging you, you don't have to do anything else with this story."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I kinda figured they were all coming from the same person, I didn't have a problem with that, and they were fun to write)  
> This will be the last haircut fic, or at least the last one I'm currently planning to do. Unless someone comes up with a _really_ good idea...

Hera wrinkled her nose as the untidy mop of hair that sprawled across the pillow tickled her face.  She backed away a little, pressing her back against the wall in an effort to escape, then, slowly, she reached over and touched it.  Her fingers worked their way through the knotted strands, untangling them slowly.

“Ow,” Kanan said.  His voice was muffled by the pillow where he lay, practically face-down.  He didn’t make any effort to move, or to rescue his hair.

Hera pulled her hand away.  “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine, you don’t have to stop.  Just go gentle, okay?”

When she didn’t reach over to him again.  Kanan turned over and angled his head in her direction as though he could look at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Hera smiled.  “I was just thinking how strange it is that human hair doesn’t have any nerve endings, but it can still hurt when I pull a knot.”

Kanan shrugged.  “Well, you’re pulling on my scalp, it’s not the hair that hurts.”

“I know,” Hera told him.  She reached over again and touched his hair, not trying to detangle it now, simply feeling the smoothness of its texture.  “It’s still strange.”

Kanan nodded, and smirked at her.  “As long as you’re still talking about hair in general and not just  _my_  hair again.”

She looked at the strange mess of a haircut he still sported.  He had, at Sabine’s insistence, gotten the two sides cut to equal lengths, but that was all.  From there, it had grown slightly longer, but still looked like something not entirely intentional had happened to it.

“Let’s say both,” Hera suggested.

“I can still get it cut again,” Kanan told her.  She could tell he wasn’t serious from the smile he wore at the suggestion.  “Maybe go for something like Ezra has.  Or Rex.”

Hera punched him lightly with a loose fist.  “Not funny,” she said.

“Are you sure?  Rex seemed to think it was a good idea, and you know, long hair can be a liability in a fight, not to mention the disruption it causes when something gets stuck in it.  It’s been a month and we’re still talking about that.”

“You know, I’m your superior officer, I can order you not to cut it,”

She couldn’t, of course.  Or, she  _could_ , but it wouldn’t make any difference, and nor should it.  Luckily, she knew for a fact that Kanan was just messing with her.

Kanan tapped his forehead in mock-salute, still laying with his head on the pillow.  “You’re just saying that because you don’t like the idea of cutting hair.  Don’t think I don’t notice you sneaking off into the Phantom when this happened.”  He indicated his head with a vague wave of his saluting hand.  “You didn’t want to watch it, did you?”

It was true.  No matter how long she spent around humans in general, and Kanan in particular, she would never be able to get her head around the fact that hair was not lekku; hair couldn’t feel.  She knew a human would be no more bothered by cutting hair than they would by cutting their fingernails, or a piece of clothing they were wearing, but still the idea still made her wince in sympathetic pain.

“I had something I needed to do,” she said.  “And I didn’t think you’d appreciate an audience.”

Kanan didn’t reply.  Slowly and reluctantly, he sat up in the bed, then reached for his hair, dragging his fingers through it a few times, far more roughly than Hera had, without any apparent pain from the knots and tangles.  “It’s getting longer,” he said.

He was right.  The sides came down almost to his jawline now, when he pulled it down with his fingers.  He gathered it up, brushing it back with the palms of his hands, testing the length.  A little of the hair at the sides escaped from his grip and returned to frame his face, the rest stayed comfortably clenched in a fist behind his head.

“Nearly there,” he said.

Hera pushed the dropped strands back into place and looked at him critically.  “You know,” she said.  “I think it’s actually going to look pretty strange now, when you can do that again.  I’ve gotten used to it hanging around your face like that.”  She let go, and the hair fell back again.

Kanan sighed in mock resignation.  “Well, I  _guess_  I can leave it like this,” he suggested.  “If that’s what you prefer.”

Hera shook her head.  “Definitely not,” she said.  “But when it’s longer, if you decided to leave it loose sometimes, I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all.”

Kanan grinned.  “Is that an order?” he asked.  “You  _are_  my superior officer, after all.”

She reached around his head and pulled his hand away, allowing the hair to fall back around his face.  “Let’s just call it a strongly worded suggestion,” she told him.


	7. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I wish you would write a fic where Kanan meets Kasmir again (with Ezra or without is up to you)"_

“Well, well.  Long time no…” the tall Kalleran man hesitated.  “Sorry.  I suppose I shouldn’t say that, should I?”

Ezra watched him warily, his hand on his lightsaber.  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Kanan too, trying to gauge his reaction so that he could back him up if necessary, but without having to take his eyes off the newcomer.

The man didn’t look like much of a threat, but of course that was no reason to let their guard down.  Appearances could be deceptive, sometimes deliberately so, and you couldn’t trust that even the most innocent looking person wasn’t planning to plant a knife in your back.  And this guy definitely wasn’t innocent looking.

Kanan didn’t appear overly concerned though.  Ezra could tell from the way he folded his arms, and his tone of voice, as well as the information that he could glean through the Force that he didn’t feel threatened, but there was a wariness there, he wasn’t entirely at ease.

Ezra kept his hand on the hilt of the lightsaber, but relaxed just slightly.

“You can say what you like, Kasmir,” Kanan said, “you never censored yourself before, why stop now?”

“Good point,” Kasmir, whoever he was, agreed.  He hesitated, then sighed deeply.  “So, you got yourself caught up in the Rebellion, what were you thinking?  And this,” he reached out and touched the lightsaber hanging from Kanan’s belt.  “I thought you gave this up around the time you cut that braid out of your hair.  For someone who claimed not to need me anymore, you sure made a lot of stupid choices since you’ve been out on your own.”

“Maybe,” Kanan said, “From a certain point of view.”

The Kalleran huffed, like he had been hoping for an argument and had been disappointed.

“Wearing that out in public though, kid.  It’s still risky, you know.  There are still plenty of people that remember.”

Ezra released his grip on his own lightsaber, deciding that the man didn’t appear to be enough of a threat to warrant drawing attention to the weapon.

“Looks like it already got you into trouble,” the man continued.  “I’m betting that mask is covering a burn, am I right?”

Kanan sighed.  “It wasn’t actually  _this_  one that did it,” he said, indicating his weapon with a wave of his hand.  

“It was one like it, what difference does it make?”

Kanan folded his arms again and replied through gritted teeth.  “Mostly, the difference is that if it was this one, that would mean I either let someone steal it, and I’m not that stupid, or I did it to myself and I’m  _definitely_  not that careless.”

Kanan had let Ezra steal it once.  He didn’t mention that, he didn’t want to interrupt.  It felt as though Kanan had almost forgotten he was there, lost in the conversation with this man that had approached them in the street.

The Kalleran — Kasmir, Kanan had called him — laughed deeply.  “Well, you used to be pretty clumsy, you know.”

“No, that was an act.  Jedi aren’t clumsy, I pretended once to put them off my tail.”

Ezra leaned against the wall, confused.  He was going to have a lot to ask Kanan about after they got back to the Ghost.

Kasmir shook his head.  “No, kid.  You’re thinking of that time you did it on purpose.   _I’m_  thinking of that time you tripped over your own feet and landed inside the crate we’d just unloaded.”

“That was different; I’d been drinking.   _You_  got me drunk, as I recall.”

Kasmir shrugged.  “I was testing to make sure alcohol wouldn’t loosen your tongue.  Wouldn’t have done to have you spilling my secrets whenever you walked into a bar.”  He hesitated.  “Or your own secrets for that matter, especially those.  But okay, maybe not clumsy then, but careless.  What else would you call someone that trusted a guy like me to tell them when to stop drinking?”  He laughed.

Kanan laughed at that too, loudly.  “It’s good to see you again, Kasmir.”

Ezra watched in fascination as the two men very briefly embraced, clapped one-another on the back, and then backed away again.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened to you?” Kasmir asked.  “Or are you going to leave it to my imagination?”

Kanan appeared thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.  “It’s a story for another time,” he said.  

For a moment, Ezra thought Kasmir was going to argue, but he shrugged instead, and nodded.  “So there’ll be another time, then?” he asked.

“It’s a surprisingly small galaxy,” Kanan told him.  “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.  In fact, if you’re going to be hanging around this planet for a few days, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Maybe we can get a drink,” Kasmir said, “see whether you’re still as impressively tight-lipped with your secrets.”

Kanan nodded.  “But right now, we’ve got some of those secrets to take care of.  It really has been good to see you again, Kasmir.”

Kasmir snorted in apparent amusement, and turned away.  Ezra waited until he was a safe distance away, before looking back at him, and then to Kanan.  “So, what was that about?” he asked.

Kanan shook his head.  “That’s a story for another time too,” he said.

That one, Ezra got the distinct impression, he wouldn’t be hearing any time soon.


	8. Reunion, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan and Kasmir meet for a drink.  
> As requested by Elenaji

Requested by Elenaji on Archive Of Our Own, a continuation of that [Kasmir fic](http://prepare4trouble.tumblr.com/post/162602168291/i-wish-you-would-write-a-fic-where-kanan-meets) I wrote earlier in the week .

“When you said ‘another time’, I didn’t really think you meant the next day,” Kasmir said as he pushed open the door to the local cantina and walked through. “I guess you missed me more than you let on.”

Kanan followed closely behind him, and was hit by a wall of sound.  The door swung closed behind him and banged against the doorframe with a loud clunk that was almost completely drowned out by the roar of the room.

It wasn’t a large cantina by any standards, but it was either vastly overpopulated or had such bad acoustics that it sounded fuller than it was.  Over the years, the odor of stale beer from a thousand spillages had soaked into the walls, floor and furniture.  His feet stuck to the floor, which was coated with a thick layer of something that had probably been there for as long as the place had been standing.

Kasmir took a deep breath of the stale air, savoring it, then clasped Kanan on the shoulder before heading over to the bar.

“I notice you didn’t tell me I was wrong,” he shouted over the ambient noise.  “You did miss me then?”

The bar itself was surprisingly clear of customers, the two of them slotted in between a lone Torgruta at one side and a rowdy group of humans at the other.  “It had to be tonight,” Kanan told him, dodging the question just slightly.  He raised his voice to be heard over the general din.  “I just learned we’re heading out of the system for a few days first thing in the morning, and I didn’t know how long you’d be sticking around.”

Honestly, he’d been eager to have a proper conversation with him, one without Ezra there to overhear and quiz him over later.  By rights, Kasmir should hate him, or at least harbor a healthy distrust.  He had been glad to learn that that wasn’t the case.

Kanan didn’t quite catch Kasmir’s reply, but before he could ask him to repeat it, the Kalleran had caught the attention of the bartender and ordered two drinks.  “There’s a table over there,” Kasmir yelled.  He didn’t bother, or didn’t think, to explain where.  “Looks like it might be a better place to talk.”

Kanan nodded, and taking his drink in his hand, followed Kasmir across the room to a small table in the corner. Kasmir was right, it was a little quieter there, and they would be able to talk without straining to hear every word.

As with every surface in the place, the tabletop was coated with a sticky layer.  Thankfully the rickety stool Kanan sat on had been spared whatever spillage had been responsible.

“Nice place,” Kasmir said appreciatively.

Kanan picked up his glass.  Over the last few seconds, it had begun to sink into the layer coating the table.  He pried it free.   “Yeah, it’s doing surprisingly well considering how hard it makes you work to drink your beer.”

Kasmir laughed, loudly.  The sound of it filled the room, and for a moment it was all Kanan could hear.  “Maybe that’s why it’s so busy; all these people have been trapped here for years, stuck to their own seats!”

Kanan laughed too, and took a long sip of the slightly too warm drink.  It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t  _good_ , but that would probably have been hoping for too much.

“No mask tonight?” Kasmir asked.  “Decided it’s useless if I recognized you?”

Kanan shook his head.  “I don’t wear it as a disguise,” he said.  That wasn’t entirely true, he just didn’t wear it to disguise  _himself_.  “Anyway, it attracts attention, I thought it might be better to leave it off.”

Kasmir hesitated, thoughtful.  “Sorry to be the one to tell you this, kid, but a face like that is gonna draw attention whether you cover it up or not.”

Kanan knew that, of course, and it no longer bothered him.  Still, experience had taught him that one drew more attention than the other.  The third alternative would have been to cover his eyes with something else, but he doubted that would have helped matters any.  It wasn’t like he was particularly trying to go incognito anyway, he was just trying to avoid looking  _too_  interesting.  A little interesting was fine.

“Doesn’t bother you, does it?” he asked.  “I never thought Janus Kasmir would be squeamish about a scar.”

Kasmir sighed deeply.  “No, I’ve seen much worse than that over the course of a lifetime, kid.  Bothers me that it’s  _you_  sporting it, but that’s a different question altogether.”

He was right, that was a different question entirely.  Kanan took a deep draught of his warm beer.  He didn’t want to talk about that right now, so instead he seized on something familiar, something he could use to steer the conversation back to more comfortable topics.  “Don’t call me ‘kid’, Kasmir.” he said.  “For one thing, it’s not even true anymore.”

Kasmir laughed.  “So, you finally admit that it  _was_  true back then?”

He had him there.  Kanan shrugged.  “I’ll admit I might not have been  _quite_  as mature as I thought I was.  I’ve learned a lot since then.”

“Yeah, haven’t we all?  Anyway, I see you’ve got a kid of your own now, don’t you?”

Kanan smiled, feeling a burst of pride at the thought.  “In a way,” he said.

“Seems like a good kid,” Kasmir told him.  “Doesn’t take after you at all.”

Kanan pried his glass free from the table and took another drink, noting with surprise that he had somehow almost emptied it already.  “He’s not actually mine,” he admitted.

“Could’a fooled me,” Kasmir told him.  He put his glass down heavily on the table, it sounded empty.

Kanan smiled again.  It was a nice thought.

“Here’s an idea,” Kasmir said.  “I can tell you don’t want to talk about what happened to your eyes, so I’ll give you a pass on that for now — no guarantees we won’t get around to it later — if you tell me this story instead.”

Kanan considered it.  He didn’t mind talking about his eyes, what he didn’t want to do was talk Jedi, and Sith, and lightsaber battles in a busy cantina, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be overheard.

“And it’s your round,” Kasmir added.

Kanan tilted his own glass, measuring the remaining drink there by the weight of it, then tipped back his head and finished it in one gulp — there was no point getting half a drink behind at this early stage in the evening.  “Same again?” he asked.

Kasmir pushed his glass in Kanan’s direction.  “Keep them coming,” he said.  He paused, then laughed.  “Old man.”

Kanan didn’t react as he picked up the glass and turned in the direction of the bar.  He could hear Kasmir’s laughter following him right across the room.


	9. Reunion, part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Maybe do a Kasmir story where he meets the crew? Especially Hera. He won't stop teasing Kanan."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It ended up only being Hera that he met, but hey he already met Ezra, so that's like 50% of the crew...

Kanan wasn’t drunk. **  
**

He  _had_  been drinking, but there was a wide spectrum between sober and drunk, and he wasn’t even close to that end of the scale.  Drunk was the room spinning uncontrollably; an inability to keep upright, losing consciousness with the beginnings of your hangover already starting to creep up on you.  Drunk was that terrible feeling of whatever you had imbibed over the course of the evening trying to make a second appearance.  It was a loss of control, it was saying or doing something that seemed perfectly reasonable, only to remember it the following day and want to punch yourself in the face.

“I’m not drunk,” he said.

Kasmir laughed.

To be fair to Kasmir, Kanan had a good idea of how it probably looked, and if their positions were reversed, he would have made the same assumption.  He was leaning heavily against the wall where he had fallen.  The world around him wasn’t actually spinning —  though he wasn’t entirely certain that he would be able to tell if it was — but he did appear to have lost track of most of it.  The wall was nice and solid, and not about to move.  He could tell where it was, as long as he just kept touching it.

“Of course.  I’ve never seen you more sober,” Kasmir told him.  A hand, presumably Kasmir’s, grabbed him around the wrist and tugged in an effort to separate him from the wall.  Kanan resisted, but while he wasn’t  _drunk_ , he wasn’t completely sober either, and the attempt had taken him off-guard.

“Honestly, I’m not drunk,” Kanan insisted.  It felt vitally important that Kasmir know that.  Kanan had been very proud, once upon a time, of his ability to hold his drink, and that was a thing that never went away, no matter how much else he had now to be proud of instead.

Kasmir laughed and clasped him hard on the shoulder.  “Tell that to your spacial awareness,” he said.

“No, really.  It’s just that the alcohol makes it more difficult to sense…” he took a step forward, allowing Kasmir to tug him away from the wall, and reached for the chair that should have been right in front of him.  It wasn’t there.  He stumbled forward another half a step before his fingers made contact with the back of it.  “Everything,” he said.

Kasmir laughed again.  “That’s the literal definition of drunk, kid.”

Kanan leaned heavily against the chair, pushing down on it rather than forwards so that it didn’t slip on the sticky floor of the cantina.  The last thing he wanted was to end up down there, among years of accumulated dirt and spillages.

“Well, that’s not fair,” he said.  He hadn’t exactly gotten over the loss of his sight, but he felt like he could accept it now.  What he wasn’t willing to accept was that loss taking away his ability to drink anybody he met under the table.  It wasn’t something he used often anymore, but it was still a useful skill to have.

“Life’s not fair.  Have you really not managed to figure that out by now?”

“Might’ve started to pick up on that, the last seventeen years or so, yeah.”  Kanan took a deep breath and reached out with the Force.  The information he was receiving was foggy, like trying to hear in a noisy room; he was catching snippets of information, some things coming through louder than others, but mostly not the things that he really needed.

In the far corner of the room, two men were about to come to blows.  When it happened, he was sure he would be able to sense every blow, but he couldn’t decide which way he needed to walk to find the exit, and there was a good chance he was going to fall over someone when he did pick a direction.

But it  _wouldn’t_  be because he was drunk.

The feeling reminded him, in an uncomfortable way, of those months after his injury; of trying and, more often than not, failing, to make the Force do what he wanted.  

Kasmir slung an arm around his shoulders, pulled him away from the chair, and steered him to the left.  “Come on, you’re not gonna get back to that ship of yours without help.”

As much as he hated to admit it, Kasmir was right.  So he didn’t admit it.  Instead, he passively allowed himself to be led out of the cantina and into the cool air of the street.

Hera wasn’t going to be happy about this.

* * *

Hera wasn’t happy.

Unfortunately, it was one of the few things that the Force was allowing him to sense.  Must have been the sheer strength of the emotion.

Kanan felt himself sway slightly, reached for the wall to steady himself and found it absent.  Instead, his hand sliced uselessly through the air to his side and slapped against his thigh.  He smiled in her general direction, trying to ingratiate himself with her.

“You need to take about a step and a half to your right,” Kasmir supplied.  Apparently the walk back to the Ghost had helped him get acquainted with the way the blind thing worked, and he seemed to have lost the habit of saying things were ‘over there’.  It was a start, anyway.

Grateful for the input, Kanan moved cautiously to his right, located the wall, and leaned against it heavily.  The walk back through the cold air had done nothing to clear his head.

“Have a good time?” Hera asked.  She sounded more than a little irritated at the display.

Kanan nodded, gripped his shirt at the bottom and tugged out any creases in an attempt to lend himself at least a little dignity.  “I did, thank you,” he said.  He heard his words slurring just slightly.  “Nice place.  Very, uh…”

“Sticky,” Kasmir supplied.

Kanan frowned.  “What?”

“The tables,” Kasmir explained.  “And the floor.  And the bar.”

Kanan nodded.  It hadn’t been what he had been reaching for, but it would do.  “Very sticky,” he agreed.

“Oh, don’t worry, he’s not drunk,” Kasmir said.  Kanan could hear the grin in his voice.

Kanan felt a stab of irritation from Hera, and something like a smirk from Kasmir, before they both faded away.  He turned in Kasmir’s approximate direction.  “Thanks,” he said.

Hera’s hands reached for his shoulders and guided him to a nearby seat.  He sank into it gratefully.  “What’s going on?” she asked.  She dropped voice to a low whisper; one that there was little doubt Kasmir would still be able to hear, but one that was clearly directed at Kanan alone.  “Who is this?”

“Old friend,” Kanan explained.  “Kasmir, Hera.  Hera, Kasmir.”

“Hey, not so much of the old,” Kasmir said.

“We kind of bumped into each other last night,” Kanan added.  “We had some catching up to do, and since I knew we were leaving tomorrow, I thought I might not get another chance.”  He was relieved to note that he was feeling better now that he was back on familiar ground, and sitting down.  He reached out with the Force, trying to get a handle on where everybody was.  Hera was standing next to him, Kasmir was just opposite.  He had sat himself down in another seat.  

Hera sighed, but she seemed to accept that.  Or maybe she was just glad that he didn’t seem quite so drunk now he was sitting down.  

“I’m really not drunk,” he said.  “I know it looks that way, but…”

“Save it,” Hera told him.  She gave his shoulder a quick squeeze.  “I’ll see you in the morning.  Drink some water.  Nice to meet you, Kasmir,” and with that, she turned and left the room.

Kanan could sense her leave, but she faded from his awareness almost the instant the door closed behind her.

Kasmir chuckled under his breath.  “How did a guy like you end up with a woman like that?  You must’ve done something right.”

Kanan shrugged.  “Just lucky, I guess.”

Kasmir laughed.  “I’m not sure how lucky you’re going to feel in the morning, kid.”

He was right.  There had definitely been a threat implicit in her goodnight, and he had a feeling that no matter how bad his hangover, he wasn’t going to get away with anything tomorrow.

“You’re calling me ‘kid’ again,” he muttered.  Still, it was better than ‘old man’, he supposed.

“You are a kid,” Kasmir told him.  He got to his feet.  “You gonna be okay getting yourself into bed, you need me to tuck you in?”

“Hilarious.”  But he  _was_  tired, and the Force still wasn’t cooperating with him.  Luckily — or unluckily, depending on how he looked at it — the memory of the months after his injury were still fresh, and he still remembered how to find his way around the Ghost without being able to rely on the Force.

Kasmir’s feet sounded loudly on the floor as he headed to the door.  He stopped before he reached it, and turned around.  “Do me a favor?” he said.  “When you’re trying to get back on your lady’s good side tomorrow, throw in a good word for me too, she doesn’t strike me as someone you want to cross, and I’d like to come back sometime, maybe meet the rest of the family.”

Kanan smiled.  “I’ll do my best.”

“You did well for yourself,” Kasmir told him, as he turned to leave again.  “Make sure you don’t screw it up.”

Kanan nodded.  He had no intention of doing that.

Kasmir’s feet sounded on the floor again as he turned back toward the exit.  “I mean it,” he said. “Kanan.”

The door opened, and then closed, and just like Hera, he was gone.

 


	10. Quilting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I wish you would write a fic where the Ghost crew discovers that Kallus has a really weird hobby, like quilting."_

“It’s not weird.”

Ezra looked at the fabric in Kallus’ hand, the needle and thread in the other, and frowned.  “It’s a  _bit_  weird,” he said.  “You’ve gotta admit that.”

Kallus ignored him for a moment, while he finished stitching the two pieces of fabric together, tied a knot in the thread, and ripped it with his teeth.  He held the finished square up and inspected it critically.  “So what do you do in your downtime that’s so much better?”

Ezra shrugged and tried to look important.  “Well, I don’t really  _have_  downtime.  What with my work for the rebellion, Jedi training, going on missions… You know, important stuff.”

Zeb laughed.  “On the old base, he and some of the pilots and engineers used to race dokma behind the flight hangar,” he said, from the other side of the room.  “They placed bets on them, and Ezra always lost.”

Kallus raised an eyebrow, and began to measure another piece of cloth.  “Well, I can certainly see why you’d think  _this_  is weird,” he said.  “Because that sounds like a far more sensible way to spend your time.”

Ezra grimaced, and glared at Zeb.  Zeb shrugged unapologetically.  “What?  You did.”

“Yeah, well at least it’s not making a quilt.  I mean, who does that?”

“I do,” Kallus said, simply, and began to cut his next square.

Ezra leaned over and watched him.  The fabric he was using for this one looked oddly familiar.  “Is that… an Imperial uniform?”

“Part of one, yes,” Kallus told him.  “It’s part of what I was wearing when I escaped.  It’s not like there’s a huge amount of spare cloth around here, and I’m not going to be wearing it again.” 

“We could have used that on an undercover mission,” Ezra told him.  "You’ve just destroyed it!”

Zeb sighed.  “He asked permission,” he said.  “We’ve got plenty of old uniforms lying around, we didn’t need that one.”

Ezra shrugged.  “Fine.  Okay then.  So, what do you do with the quilts when they’re finished?”

Kallus began to cut another square.  He had also acquired some kind of padded material that had already been cut into several squares and sat by his side, waiting to be used.  He shrugged.  “I never actually finished one,” he said.  “I’d been working on one for years, just on and off.  It was almost done, but of course I had to leave it behind.  If I finish this one, I imagine I’ll use it to keep myself warm at night, what else would I do?”

“Right.  Makes sense.”  Ezra reached over and picked up the completed square, feeling the texture of it, the softness of the layer inside.  “So…”  he hesitated, still running the fabric through his fingers.  “Do you maybe have time to show  _me_  how to do this?”

Kallus gave him an amused look.  “I thought you said it was ‘weird’.”

“It is.”  Ezra shrugged.  “I never said there was anything wrong with being weird.”


	11. Agent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra tries to find out Kallus' first name

“You’ve got to tell us,” Ezra insisted.

Kallus frowned. “I don’t see why.”

“Well, we’re on the same side now.”

Kallus shook his head. “And why is that a reason?”

Ezra sighed and folded his arms, then fixed his gaze on Kallus and glared as hard as he could.

“What are you doing?” Kallus asked. “Are you trying to read my mind?”

“No,” Ezra assured him. “I’m just glaring… uh… I mean yes! Yes I am! With the Force. And if you don’t tell me, I’ll just find it out for myself, so you might as well just save me the effort.”

Kallus smirked, unconvinced. “Why would I want to save you the effort?”

“Because we’re…”

“On the same side. Yes, you said.” Kallus sighed and glanced around. “Have you seen Zeb? He was supposed to meet me here.”

“Don’t change the subject. What’s your name?”

Kallus gave one last look around and appeared to give up on Zeb rescuing him. He took a deep breath. “Why is this so important to you?”

Ezra grinned, sensing that he was making some headway. “I just think it’d be nicer if everyone knew you a bit better. Don’t you?” He winced slightly. “Aaand there’s a chance we might have placed bets on it one time.”

Ezra thought he saw Kallus roll his eyes.

“Is it Kallum?” Ezra asked. “Kallum Kallus?”

The corners of Kallus’ lips turned up as he shook his head. “No.”

“Okay, just answer me this, It’s not ‘Agent’, is it? Because I’ve been seriously worried that it might be.”

Kallus shook his head. “It’s not ‘Agent’. That isn’t a name.”

“And you do definitely have a first name?”

Kallus sighed. “It’s Alexsandr,” he said.

Ezra stared at him, then shook his head. “You’re just making something up to make me stop asking, aren’t you?”

“No,” Kallus assured him. “I’m not.”

Ezra stared harder, scrutinizing Kallus’ expression. “Fine,” he said eventually. “Alexsandr it is.” He grinned slowly. “Alex. Al…”

“No.”

“Xandr? How about just Xand?”

“Kallus will do fine,” Xand assured him.

Ezra shrugged. “Fine, fine, Kallus it is. So, any middle names..?”


	12. Fighting: Prelude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Hi! Thinking about your fic: Fighting, I was wondering, could you give us a bit of background to the story. Like how family can press people a little too much, and you need your space, but you don't want to say to them "Stop!' so you look for excuses to find some space."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just realized I never posted this one on here, and I think there's another recent one I didn't post too. Well, better late than never.

“Zeb’s doing a security sweep, Sabine’s out looking for rock formations to paint…”

“Wait, what? I didn’t know she painted landscapes. Has this started since I lost my sight?”

“I’m… not sure that’s what she meant. It was either that she wanted to paint pictures of them, or she wanted to paint graffiti on them. She wasn’t clear.

“Right. So, Chopper?”

“He’s been drafted in to help AP-5 inventory some new stock. He’s not happy about it, so we need to be extra-nice to him when he gets back.”

“Okay, so that just leaves Ezra.”

“Yeah. He has nothing scheduled for three hours.”

“No good. The others might be back by then.”

“Probably. Do we really need the whole ship to ourselves? It’s not like we’re going to be doing anything private. Well… not outside of my quarters anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you ever crave alone time? Even if you’re not doing anything, sometimes it’s nice to know that nobody’s watching you do nothing.”

“Well, sure. But it wouldn’t be alone time. You’d be here.”

“Yeah, well, you know I make alone time much more interesting.”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, of course you are. You remember what it was like when it was just the two of us.”

“The three of us. Don’t forget Chopper, or he’ll get mad.”

“Yeah, good point. But he wasn’t always around. Or, maybe he was, but the ship felt bigger when it was less crowded.”

“Well, it’s less crowded right now. Anyway, for all we know Ezra’s not even on the ship, just because he doesn’t have anything to do doesn’t mean he’s in his room.”

“Good point. I’ll check… Nope, he’s in the lounge.”

“Oh. Well he might not stay there for long. What were you planning on doing with all this alone time, anyway?”

“Well, nothing really.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Might have been. You’ll never know now, will you?”

“I guess not…”

“Oh, wait. Ezra’s getting up.”

“Is he going to his quarters?”

“I think so, he’s… no, even better, he’s heading out of the ship.”

“So, we have the whole place to ourselves?”

“For now.”

“Wow. You’re right, that is a good feeling.”

“…”

“What?”

“Sabine’s back. Aaand Ezra came back in with her.”

“Ah. Well, it was nice while it lasted.”

“No. This is going to happen.”

“Well, we could ask everyone to leave one day. Just choose a time and put the word out that the ship’s off limits for a couple of hours.”

“Wouldn’t work. For a start it’s not the same if you have to organize it, but can you imagine the questions and comments we’d have to put up with?”

“Yeah, that’s true. Well, I can try to schedule everyone tasks at the same time, but it’ll take a while to organize.”

“No, I have a better idea. Okay, I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about this, but hear me out…”


	13. Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: a thing where kanan is already blind, and then literally loses his eyes.  
> (A/N - I might have interpreted this differently than the prompter wanted)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted this on Tumblr last week and then forgot to put it on here. The fill is ~~probably~~ not exactly what the anon was hoping for; I kind of deliberately misunderstood because the thing they actually wanted, I wouldn't have been able to write very well. I did put the prompt in [SWRRequests](https://swrrequests.tumblr.com) though, so maybe someone will write it properly. In the meantime, here's something a little bit silly.

Kanan swept his hand across the table in his quarters, and found it empty.  Confused, he tried again, adjusting the angle of the sweeping arc of his hand.  Nothing.  Well, hairbrush.  But not the thing he was searching for.

He bit back a curse, and attacked the table with both hands, starting from the left and moving right, touching every square inch of the surface.  It wasn’t there.

“Karabast,” he muttered under his breath.

Behind him, on the bunk, he heard Hera beginning to stir.  He felt her presence in the Force shift slightly as she woke.

Kanan didn’t turn to face her.  Instead, he moved on to the top of the set of drawers.  He explored it in a similar way, moving the few objects that had been left there overnight.  None of them were the thing he was looking for.

“What is it?” Hera asked from behind him.  He heard her turn over; when he had crept out of the bed she had been facing the wall.  He could hear the tiredness in her voice, it had been a very late night.  It was too early, actually, for them to be awake.  They had, at the very least, earned a few extra hours to sleep in.

“Shh,” he told her.  “Go back to sleep, I’ll be there in a minute.”

The silence from the other side of the room told him that she had followed his instructions, but her presence in the Force didn’t shift back to sleep.  He could feel her eyes on him, watching.

He sighed.  “I’ve lost my eyes,” he said, feeling ridiculous just saying the words.

He didn’t take them out often, he didn’t need to.  Just every now and then, to clean them.  Other than that, he wore them constantly.  There was no reason not to.  The prosthetics didn’t allow him to see, but they had the advantage of being more realistic than cybernetic implants.  Hera had told him — and he had no reason to doubt her — that they looked exactly like his real eyes had.

He had only removed them last night because he was beginning to feel a little discomfort from the prosthetics.  He had been too tired to do anything about it there and then, and he didn’t want to leave it until the morning.  He had left them, in sterile water, on the table by his bed, ready for him to clean and re-insert them.

Only, apparently, he hadn’t.

“Oh!  Sorry!”  Hera was completely awake now.  “No, they’re not lost.”  She climbed quickly out of the bunk and crossed the room to him.  “I thought I’d wake up before you, so I could tell you.”

She opened a closet and reached inside, then placed something on the tabletop.  Kanan reached for it, and found the container he had used.  He turned to face Hera, fully aware that his questioning look would be ruined by his eyelids, closed over empty sockets.  He raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she said again.  “It’s just, that cup; it’s transparent.”

Kanan frowned, confused.

“So, I can see through it.  To your eyes.  In a cup.”

Oh.  Oh!  Kanan winced.  He hadn’t thought about it like that.  Now that she mentioned it, it did sound a little creepy.  He hadn’t even realized the cup was transparent.  Even if he had, the problem wouldn’t have occurred to him.  “Sorry,” he muttered, embarrassed.  He snatched up the cup and turned away so that she couldn’t see it.  “I’ll take care of this in the fresher.”

He heard Hera laugh quietly and get back into bed as he left the room, and he knew there was no way he had heard the last of this.


	14. From Here On Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Here On Out - The war is over, and Hera and Kanan prepare for the next chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Here's a prompt: Hera pets a loth-cat and Kanan gives her a massage and everyone is happy."

Honestly, Hera had never really believed that she would live to see the end of the war. She had never doubted that they would win, but she had never truly believed that she would be there for it. Or worse than that, in her nightmares she had imagined that she was there, alone. She had dreamed of being stranded on the ground during a battle, helpless to do anything as communications from the Ghost ceased.

That was one of the reasons that she had never accepted a position on one of the Rebellion’s growing number of bases after her promotion to General. If anything happened to her family, she had wanted to be right there with them. It had paid off, too. Sabine and Ezra were both excellent pilots, but she knew the Ghost like it was an extension of her own body, she could do things without even thinking that they still found impossible. It wasn’t conceit, to think that, it was simply the way things were. Kanan and Ezra had the Force, Sabine had her art, Zeb his skill as a warrior, Hera was a pilot.

She took a deep breath of Lothal’s air. It tasted sweet again, not completely clear of the pollutants that the Empire had pumped into the atmosphere, but it was healing a little more every day. Crops were beginning to grow again under the careful ministrations of the farmers who were skillfully reintroducing lost nutrients into the once almost barren soil. The grasslands were beginning to spread and grow healthy once more, the deconstruction of the remaining Imperial factories was nearly complete. The world must almost look like the one that Ezra remembered from his early childhood. Almost, but not quite.

It would get there, in time, and Ezra would be there to see it happen. They all would.

Something brushed against her leg and she stiffened in surprise before looking down to see a loth-kitten staring up at her hopefully. It was small, skinny, and that mottled orange and brown color that was common among the species. She reached down to touch it, and it raised its head, nose sniffing hopefully at her fingers, searching for something to eat.

“I’m sorry,” she told it. “I don’t have any food for you.”

Realizing it wasn’t going to be fed, the loth-kitten decided to settle for being petted instead, alternating between standing still while she ran her hand over its back, and moving around to make her stroke the side it wanted.

Hera sighed, and sat down among the tall grass, relaxing as her hand caressed the impossibly smooth fur of the kitten. It was young enough that it hadn’t yet grown rough with age, and its features were still that of a baby, barely old enough to be out alone.

She became aware of Kanan’s presence behind her, in that way that she had discovered over the past few months. It wasn’t her doing it, she knew that, it was the life growing inside her recognizing its father, or perhaps just acknowledging the presence of another Force user, sitting up and paying attention. Although, probably not. It didn’t react as strongly to Ezra.

Hera turned and smiled. “You can’t sneak up on me at the moment, you know that, right? She warns me.”

Kanan smiled widely in response, his scarred eyes not quite meeting her own. He sat down next to her and reached out, a hand caressing her slightly swollen belly. He had told her that he never heard of non-Force sensitive mothers feeling the Force like that before, but then, his experience of such things was limited. The only thing he knew was that their daughter — Kanan was certain it would be a daughter — was exceptionally strong with the Force.

“Would I try to sneak up on you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe not intentionally, but you’re pretty stealthy sometimes.”

He laughed.

“I have to admit,” she told him, her fingers still running over the loth-cat’s tiny head and down its back to its tail, “I know it’s not really me doing it, and it probably doesn’t feel the same as for you, but being able to sense the Force like this is interesting. I never thought I’d experience it.”

Kanan nodded, his hand still caressing her stomach while the other reached for her shoulder and began to knead the tense muscles there. “Are you going to miss it, when she’s here?”

Her fingers stilled on the loth-cat’s back, and it mewed in protest until she started again. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe, a little. But just think what we’ll have instead.”

He smiled. His hand moved away from her stomach and to her other shoulder. Skilled fingers worked together to chase every knot of tension from her muscles and Hera sighed contentedly.

“Anyway, I think I’m going to be too busy to notice. We both are.”

“Nah,” Kanan said. “She’s going to be no trouble at all.”

Hera had to laugh at that. “You do know who her parents are, right?”

He paused to consider that, then shrugged. “Good point. She’s going to be a handful. Luckily for us, we’ll have no shortage of willing babysitters.

It was true. Ezra had volunteered the moment he had heard. Hera sighed and allowed herself to relax as his fingers continued their skilled work, moving down into her upper back. “Do you think we’re going to be okay now?” she asked. After fighting for so long, it was hard to believe that it was really over.

“Of course,” Kanan promised her. “Everything’s going to be perfect from here on out.” He couldn’t know that, not really. Still, in that moment it was easy to believe him. She nodded, and didn’t say anything else, not wanting to break the spell.

Hera had never really believed that she would live to see the end of the war, but she had proven herself wrong. If she needed to, she would gladly do the same again.


	15. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb has questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Hi! Would you be interested in writing a fic with Caleb in creche or in his smuggler days before Gorse?"_

Caleb sat cross legged on the floor of the classroom, eyes closed and breathing slow and even as he tried to concentrate on the Force surrounding him.

He had a question.

It had been brewing for quite some time, starting as a little niggling thought that he could almost ignore, but growing and expanding in the back of his mind until it was all that he could think of, until all chance of meditating along with his classmates was eliminated.  The Master knew it, too.  Even with his eyes closed and his face the picture of calm, she had noticed, and her attention was on him.

But if she could sense him, and he could sense her sensing him, was that all there was to it?  If the Force was in everyone and everything, if the Jedi could forge connections between themselves and other living creatures, if they could sense emotions and even — he had never done it, only heard abut it in rumor, and it would be years before he was allowed to try — even control the actions of weaker-minded people. Surely it was possible to know someone else’s thoughts.  He didn’t like the idea.

“Master?” he said.  His voice cut through the silence in the room like a knife, but he didn’t care, he had to know the answer.  “If the Force is everywhere and in everybody, is it possible to know what someone else is thinking?” he asked.  

The disturbance spread through the room as the other younglings began to shuffle, taking advantage of the interruption to alter uncomfortable positions and stretch out cramping muscles.  Others began to whisper among themselves.  Caleb slid open one eye and looked around.  He had become the center of attention again.

The Master frowned and shook her head.  “Some Masters can do that, yes,” she said, still frowning.  “It’s something you’ll learn about in time, and if you have a talent for it, perhaps you will be able to develop it.”

Caleb shook his head.  He didn’t have a talent for it, and he didn’t particularly want to.  What he really wanted to learn was advanced lightsaber techniques and ways to use the Force in battle.  When he was a Padawan out in the field alongside his Master, those would be the kinds of things he needed to know.  “I don’t want to learn that,” he said.  As useful as it might be sometimes, there was a much more pressing thought in his mind.  “What about stopping it?  Can I make sure people can’t read me?”

The Master sighed tolerantly, but he could sense her irritation below the surface.  “The skills are connected, Caleb,” she said, “So maybe you can, yes.  Now, I don’t know about you, but  _I’m_  having no difficulty knowing what your classmates think of you interrupting our meditation.”

She was right, he knew almost exactly what they were thinking; they were overwhelmingly pleased by it, some interested in the answer to the question, others simply glad of the distraction.  One or two appeared not to have realized, lost so deeply in their meditation that the exchange had escaped their notice.

He didn’t say that; he didn’t think she would appreciate that particular insight.  Anyway, there were more important things to say; he had another question.


	16. Quarantine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew arrive back from a mission to discover that Chopper has put quarantine procedures in place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Since I just watched a Red Dwarf episode with approximately this premise: the Ghost crew were in a potentially toxic area, and Chopper enjoys putting in quarantine procedures when they get back!"_
> 
> I might have gone a little overboard.
> 
> The problem is, I know that episode (and all Red Dwarf episodes) like really, really well. As in I can almost quote it word for word. And that is one of my favorites. Honestly, I don’t think you wanted an entire retelling of Quarantine, but that’s kinda what you got. I really did try not to take too much from the episode though (note the lack of Mr Flibble and Rimmer’s gingham dress – if the Ghost had a video link in the cargo bay, they might well have made an appearance though! No luck virus here either, but who needs luck when you have the Force?
> 
> Also, to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, you have my apologies!

Ezra wasn’t claustrophobic, not by a long shot.  The Ghost wasn’t exactly spacious, and his windowless quarters even less-so.  In the past, he had regularly relied on his ability to crawl through small spaces to escape or to hide, it had saved his life on occasion.  This, however, was very different.  They had entered the Ghost through the cargo bay doors, and found that they couldn’t get out into the rest of the ship.

There was something about being in a place that he couldn’t get out of that bothered him.

It wasn’t a completely unfounded discomfort, considering what had happened to his parents.  Or considering the lingering threat of an Imperial jail that had hung over his own head for so much of his life, and still did, if he should be unlucky enough to be captured.

He walked across the center of the cargo bay until he reached the wall, stopped, turned, and walked back again, trying to ignore the feeling of rising panic building inside him. “This is ridiculous!” he complained.  “We’ve been trapped in here forever.  There’s nothing wrong with us.  If we were going to get sick, surely we’d have done it by now!”

Kanan shook his head, a curious expression on his face.  “It’s only been half an hour,” he said.

Ezra forced out an exasperated sound and flopped down on the single bunk that Chopper had thought to provide in the cargo bay.  His knees and elbows hit an unexpectedly hard surface.

Well, that was just great.

“He does have a point though,” Zeb said.  “I mean, not the half hour thing, that’s ridiculous, but how long is Chopper going to keep us prisoner in here?”

“And,” Sabine added, “if one of us does have it, surely locking us all up in here is a great way to make sure we all get sick.

Hera frowned.  “Chopper said the incubation period is up to four days.  If we’re still healthy then, we’re okay to leave.”

“Great!”  Ezra sighed loudly.  Four days?  There was no way he was going to be able to do this.  “I’m fine,” he said.  “I don’t  _get_  sick.  Not often, anyway.  And if I was, surely I’d be able to feel it.  Nobody we spoke to on the planet was sick, nobody had even  _mentioned_  an illness going around.  Chopper’s probably just messing with us.”

Sabine glanced around, looking worried all of a sudden.  “You don’t think he might be right, do you?” she asked Hera.  “You know what Chopper’s like, if there’s any chance he’s just playing some kind of a joke on us…”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Hera promised.

“Yeah,” Zeb agreed.  “He knows what I’d do to him if he tried it!”

Kanan shrugged.  “Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t.  Either way, it’s going to be fine.”

* * *

“Hey,”

Ezra looked up from the space between his feet to see Kanan standing in front of him.

“You okay?” he asked.

Ezra nodded.  “Sure,” he said.  “Why wouldn’t I be?  After all, who doesn’t want to be locked in the cargo bay with four other people for a week, with a porta-fresher and only one bed?”

The corners of Kanan’s lips twitched in something that looked like amusement.  “We’ll talk to him about the sleeping situation the next time he checks in.”  He sat himself down on the bed next to Ezra, then frowned.  “Wait a minute,”  His hands explored the surface of the bunk.

“Yeah,” Ezra confirmed.  “He ‘forgot’ to put any padding on it too.”

Kanan sighed.  “We’ll talk to him about that too,” he said.  “It’s going to be fine.”

* * *

“Chopper?” Sabine said, arms folded and glaring at nothing, as they didn’t have any kind of a view screen installed in the cargo bay and were relying on audio only to communicate with the outside world.  “Here’s a thought.  Why do we have to stay in the cargo bay when the only other person on the ship is you?  You’re not organic; even if we did have this virus you wouldn’t be able to catch it.”

Chopper explained about the contamination of surfaces aboard the ship.  It didn’t sound very convincing.

“Chopper, if you’re lying to us, you’re going to be in real trouble,” she said, her eyes narrowing in frustration. 

An indignant sound came over the comms, and Chopper cut out the signal.

“Great!” Sabine said, her voice tight with anger.

“Calm down,” Hera told her.  “We’ve just got to get through the next few days, then we can get out of here.  Why don’t you draw something, I’m sure I saw a sketchbook and crayons in the box of stuff he gave us.”

Zeb let out a derisive snort from the other side of the room, one that began to make a lot more sense when Sabine opened the box.  A brand new, crisp sketch pad, and a box of crayons, every single one broken down so far that they were useless, and no way to sharpen them.

“Damnit!” she shouted, and threw the box across the room in frustration.  “He did that on purpose!”

Hera, watching from the corner, glanced at the surveillance cameras through which she was sure Chopper would be watching them.  “I think you might be right,” she said.

“What else is there in there?” Kanan asked.

Sabine reached into the box.  “Oh, hours of entertainment,” she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.  “A children’s board game with the pieces missing, a datapad that’s either broken or run out of power, I can’t tell which, and a holovid.”

“Well, at least that last thing isn’t so bad,” Kanan said.  “Not as much fun for me, but maybe you guys could narrate…”

“We don’t have a player,” Hera interrupted.

Kanan sighed.  “Right.”

* * *

“Think he’s gonna feed us?” Zeb asked.

Ezra shook his head.  “I wouldn’t count on it.  It’s Chopper.  Not like eating is a big priority for him, he’s probably forgotten that we even  _need_  food.”

“Well, he has one minute to remember, or I’m going out there and…”

“Going  _out there_?” Sabine said.  “How are you planning on doing that?  Hera’s already tried every single code she could think of on the number lock he set on the door.  Do you see any tools around here to break out?  Do you see any lightsabers to cut through the door?  No.  Because the people of the planet insisted we go unarmed.  If we could just ‘go out there’ there wouldn’t even be a problem, would there?!”

“I’ll get out there somehow,” Zeb growled.  “Just you watch!”

“Guys,” Ezra said, placing his hands behind his head in an expression of nonchalance that he did not feel.  “Relax, okay?  It’s been five hours, I’ve gone without food for  _way_  longer than that, we’re not going to starve yet.  He’s given us water, we could easily survive four days with just that.  I’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, well we can’t all be as resilient as you, can we?” Sabine said with a scowl.  “Some of us need food!  And art supplies.  And somewhere to sleep at night!”

Zeb folded his arms.  “Don’t worry Sabine,” he said.  “We won’t really starve.  If it comes down to it, we can eat the kid.”

Hera folded her arms.  “Stop it!” she said.  “I’ll speak to Chopper.  In the meantime, sit down and be quiet, we’ve done nearly a day already, we’re getting there.”

* * *

Food, when it came, was five ration bars passed through a tiny airlock capsule that Ezra hadn’t even known about.  Hera took the box and distributed the food to everybody to prevent arguments.  “Sprout flavor,” she said, as she handed them out.

“All of them?”  Ezra hesitated before taking the bar.  He looked up, at the surveillance camera.  “Chopper, you know I can’t stand these, they literally make me throw up!”

Chopper’s voice came through the intercom.   _No other flavor on board._

“Chopper, I  _know_  that’s not true!” Ezra insisted.

_Incorrect.  All other flavors have been jettisoned due to possible contamination._

“Jettisoned?  Chopper, that makes no sense at all,” Hera insisted.  “Find something else for Ezra to eat.”

“Why bother?” asked Zeb.  “He said himself, he doesn’t need to eat.  Keep these coming.  They might be disgusting, but if he’s not eating there’s more food for us.”

Ezra rounded on him, only barely resisting the urge to give in to the dark side of the Force.  “Fine, if you like that idea so much, why don’t we take your waffle stash when we get out of here?  Share it out among everyone else.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have a waffle stash,” Zeb said.  He tore open his ration bar and finished it in two gulps.  “This isn’t half bad actually, by the way.  A bit to eat really hits the spot.”

Ezra balled his hand into a fist and pulled it back ready to plant it in Zeb’s face.  Seeing this, Zeb’s expression spread into an amused grin as he prepared to retaliate.

“Stop it!”

Kanan’s voice from the other side of the room cut through the argument.  “That’s enough.  Ezra, sit on the bunk.  Zeb, over at the other side of the room, now!  It’s going to be fine, we just need to…”

All four other occupants of the room turned on him with one voice.  “Stop saying it’s going to be fine!”

Kanan backed off a step, and was just about to answer when Chopper switched on the intercom again.

_Irritability is symptomatic of the virus.  Please stand by for room decontamination._

“Wait, what?” said Kanan.  “Irritability is symptomatic of being trapped in a room with four other people for a day with nothing to do and nothing to eat!”

_Correct, however it is also symptomatic of the virus.  Further symptoms include irrationality and mental instability, followed by eventual system shutdown.  Preemptive system shutdown and reboot required for any chance of cure.  Stand by for decontamination._

“Reboot?  Full shutdown?” Ezra gulped as everything began to click into place.  He hadn’t seen anyone that was sick on the planet.  He also hadn’t seen any droids.  “Chopper, what kind of a virus was it you said they had on that planet?”

_Irrelevant.  Stand by for decontamination._

Ezra stared wildly around the room.  “It’s a computer virus,” he said.  “And Chopper’s already got it.”

“Never mind that!” Kanan said.  “What does he mean by system shutdown?”

“Nothing good,” said Hera.  She was already by the panel at the door, the cover removed and her hands in among the wiring.  “I don’t think I can do anything without tools,” she said.

Ezra took a deep breath.  Was it his imagination; the panic returning, or was the air getting a little thin?  How exactly was Chopper planning on executing the ‘systems shutdown’? “Guys?  I think…”

“Don’t talk, save your breath.”

Okay, so they figured that one out already.

Hera’s fingers continued to work at the wires, but with no way of cutting them, even if it were possible it would take too long.  “I’ve already tried every numeric code that might mean something to Chopper.  I can’t access the wiring properly without my tools.  I don’t suppose the Force would help with this?”

Ezra stepped forward.  “I guess I could try to guess the number…”

“No, Ezra.”  Ezra turned to see Kanan behind him.  “I don’t think that’s what she means.”

Ezra turned back to Hera, eyes wide, questioning.  She nodded.  “Do it.  Use the bunk, maybe, that looks heavy enough.”

Standing side by side, Kanan and Ezra concentrated on the single bunk that Chopper had provided them, lifting it and driving it with as much force as they could into the door, again and again until the metal started to buckle and a gap appeared.  Air, recycled and stale, but full of precious oxygen, began to enter the room, and Ezra took a deep, thankful breath.

“Keep going,” Zeb called.  They pulled the bunk back again, and once again thrust it forward into the door.  The metal buckled further.

“I think I could get through there,” Sabine said.  “I’ll go find Chopper, make sure he doesn’t try anything else while you guys get everyone else out.”  Without waiting for a response, she headed for the door, dropped to her knees and began to squeeze through the small gap.

“Go easy on him,” Hera called as she disappeared.  “It’s not actually his fault, and he has told us the way to cure it.”  She stared at the damage to the door.  “I can’t believe he made us do this to my ship!”

At the other side of the door, Sabine turned and peered through incredulously.  “I’ll try not to hurt him  _too much_ ,” she said.  “Well, at least until he’s back to his slightly less murderous self and we see what he has to say for himself.”  With that, she disappeared.

“Whatever she does to him, he deserves it,” Zeb said

Ezra thought about that  Actually, he wasn’t so sure.  If Chopper had been sick without realizing, and his sickness had made him paranoid enough to believe that a group of organics could be carrying a computer virus, then Hera was right, it wasn’t exactly his fault.  

Still, there was no way that Chopper wasn’t going to pay for this.


	17. Flirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra encounters a new experience: someone flirts with him and he doesn't know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyeloch prompted: Ezra is uncertain about what to do when someone actually flirts with him? (Flirts back? Up to you)

Ezra scanned the crowded marketplace, trying to look as though he was simply checking what goods were on offer.  His gaze hesitated over a girl… a woman really, of around his own age.  She was standing behind a fruit stall, also scanning the crowd with a wary expression on her face.  “I think I might see her,” he said.  “Average height, long dark hair?”

Kanan shrugged.  “Could be.  I never asked.”

Right.  Ezra folded his arms.  “Fruit stall,” he tried.  “Lots of meilooruns.”

“That’ll be the one.”

“Over there, to our left.  Second stall on the next row.”

Kanan didn’t turn his head in her direction, but nodded once to say that he had located their contact among the market crowds.  He took hold of Ezra’s arm without comment, and Ezra began to walk toward her.  Kanan didn’t need to do that, of course, but there was always the possibility that he would attract attention otherwise.  Most of the time, that wouldn’t matter.  Right now, it did.  He was attracting a kind of attention anyway; as they passed, Ezra turned and glared at a boy of maybe six who was staring unabashedly at the strip of cloth across Kanan’s face that disguised his scar.

Ezra tried not to look too purposeful as he strode in the direction of the fruit seller.  For the benefit of the three stormtroopers assigned to the market square, he casually browsed the other stalls as he passed.   _Nothing unusual here, just two guys out looking to buy some produce._

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the fruit seller was watching them with interest, the wariness in her expression deepening the closer they came.  They’d been made.  Maybe he hadn’t been quite as subtle as he had thought.

He kept up the act anyway, the stormtroopers didn’t appear to be paying them any attention, and he wanted to keep it that way.  He stopped at her stall, eyeing the fruit on display there critically.  He reached for a particularly juicy looking meiloorun.  “Are these in season on this part of the planet?” he asked, using the rehearsed code phrase.

Her eyes widened briefly in surprise and she gave him a strange look.  For a moment, he didn’t think he was going to get a reply.  Finally, she smiled, and looked him up and down, sizing him — both of them — up.  “The season’s nearly over, but they’re still good,” she told him, then leaned in a little to whisper, “I was told there’d be one of you.”

“Change of plans,” Kanan told her without elaborating.  She didn’t need to know any more than necessary.

She shrugged, then smiled at Ezra.  “Fine by me,” she said, meeting his eyes.  She took back the meiloorun he had picked up, her hands brushed against his as she did.

Ezra smiled back, and waited for her to hand him the object.  When she didn’t, he asked her. “So do you have it?” he dropped his voice as much as he could, keeping the conversation private but still wanting to be heard over the background noise of the busy market.

She nodded and reached underneath the table supporting her wares.  She barely took her eyes off him as she did, her free hand playing with a loose strand of hair just in front of her ear.  She was pretty.  Not Sabine pretty, but enough that he noticed.

She glanced around one more time, making sure nobody was paying them too much attention, then placed the box on the stall and picked up a few pieces of fruit to place on the top to disguise the contents.  “I thought I’d spotted you in the crowd,” she said as she packed the box.  “My contact sent me a description, so I knew vaguely who I was looking for, but there being two of you threw me off.”

Ezra nodded.

“He didn’t mention how blue your eyes were though,” she added.  She fiddled with her hair a little more, her tongue quickly flicked over her upper lip.  “Are they your real color, or some kind of a disguise?”  Her eyes met his and hovered there, waiting.

Ezra frowned, confused.  He glanced in Kanan’s direction, expecting him to insist that they get on with it, and saw a small but amused smile playing on his lips.

She hadn’t given them a detailed description of her eye color either, or her hair, or what she might be wearing.  It wasn’t exactly relevant as long as the had enough to find each other.  “Uh, no, they’re real.  But why would you expect to be told that?  It’s not really a useful description; lots of people have blue eyes,” he said.  “Anyway,” he indicated Kanan with a wave of his hand.  “Kanan was your contact.”

“He’s right, I’m not great at visual descriptions lately,” Kanan added.  He was still smiling, his lips pressed tightly together as though he was trying not to laugh.

Ezra winced.  That wasn’t what he had meant.  He had simply been telling her who she had been communicating with over the comms channel.  He was going to have to apologize for that later, even if Kanan did seem to find the whole thing inexplicably hilarious.

Ezra reached into his pocket and retrieved the agreed payment.  He passed the datacard to her as though it was a credit chip offered in payment.  She barely glanced down to look at it before slipping it into her pocket.  As soon as it was secure, she slid the box toward him.  As he took it, her hand very deliberately brushed against his again.  “A ‘fruitful’ transaction,” she said with a grin, watching him for his reaction to the play on words.  She placed the meiloorun he had selected earlier on the top of the box.  “I hope we can do it again sometime.”

Ezra felt his eyes widen and heat rush to his face as he realized what was going on.  “Uh… yeah,” he said.  “Yeah, that’d be great.  Well, hey, You’ve got my comms frequency.  Well, you’ve got Kanan’s, but that’s practically the same thing.”  That didn’t sound right.  “I mean, he can always get you in touch with me.  I don’t mean  _touch_ , but…”

“Ezra,” Kanan interrupted.

Ezra stopped.

“We should go,” Kanan said.

“Right.  Right…” He grabbed the box, making sure the meiloorun didn’t fall from the top, and waited for Kanan to take his arm.  “I’ll be going now then,” he said with a grin, then turned and fled quickly.

They left the market quickly, not bothering to pretend like they were still shopping.  The stormtrooper’s attention seemed to be elsewhere, and so was Ezra’s.

“She seemed nice,” he said.

Kanan sighed and shook his head in exasperation.  “Yes she did,” he said.  “When we have time, remind me to substitute a Force lesson for some flirting techniques, okay?  It’s a useful skill to have, for all kinds of reasons.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kanan let go of his arm as they left the marketplace and the crowds behind and moved into an unpopulated area where it didn’t matter if anybody noticed him.  “You don’t think there was anything wrong with how you handled the end of that conversation?”

Ezra hesitated.  She’d caught him off-guard, that was all.  He was used to flirting with people, and an expert at laughing off the inevitable rejection, it had just never occurred to him that someone might flirt with  _him_.  “Okay, yeah.  It wasn’t perfect,” he admitted.  “But it wasn’t  _that_  bad.”

“If you say so,” Kanan agreed.

“Hey, I’d like to see  _you_  do better,” Ezra said indignantly.  He couldn’t imagine Kanan of all people flirting.  In all the time he’d known him, he had never seen him so much as  _look_  at a person that wasn’t Hera in that way —well, back when he could look… — let alone try anything else.

Kanan shrugged, still looking amused; either at Ezra’s performance or his assumption about Kanan, Ezra couldn’t be sure.  “The offer’s open,” he said.

Ezra tucked the box under his arm and grabbed the meiloorun from the top, tossed it in the air and caught it again.  “I think I’m doing fine,” he said.  “After all, who’s the one that scored us the free fruit today?”

“You’re right,” Kanan said.  His smile widened to almost a grin.  “Hey, maybe you could teach  _me_  a few tricks sometime?”

Ezra sighed deeply.  There was no way he’d heard the last of this.


	18. Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is one aspect of Jedi training that Caleb really doesn't like.

Caleb sighed deeply as he fitted the helmet over his head and allowed it to obstruct his vision.  Behind him, before they pulled on their own helmets, he could feel the heat of his two friends’ glares.  The extra training was his fault, and it was going to be some time before he heard the end of it.

He fired up his lightsaber and closed his eyes; it wasn’t like they were much use to him anyway during this particular task, and leaving them open only left him frustrated as he strained to see around the obstruction before them.

He really hated this particular exercise.  There was going to be no point in his life as a Jedi where this would be relevant; there was nowhere in the galaxy dark enough that the glow of a lightsaber couldn’t provide  _some_  illumination.

It wasn’t about that, of course; he knew that.  He knew it well enough that he had never even needed to ask the question, the answer had simply come to him.  It was about learning to trust what you could learn from the Force over the information provided by your senses.  Caleb knew that, he understood it.  He just really hated not being able to see.


	19. Wishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb and his friends talk about the future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Hello! Would you like to write a story about Tai, Sammo and Caleb planning their futures? What they would like to do, who they would like to be, when they grow up? ...Of course when people plan, God laughs..."_
> 
> Substitute "God" for "the Force" here, and I think you might be right.
> 
> I didn’t stick to this request as well as I wanted to, but I don’t think I did too badly. And if you’re wondering, the scene from the previous chapter precedes this, they’ve just come straight from there.

“Well done, Caleb,” Tai said as they entered the common room area.  “Way to break the unspoken rule.”

Caleb flopped into a chair.  It had been an accident, but there was no denying that they all ended up with extra training because of him.  “I already said sorry,” he said.  “But, y’know, for a rule that’s supposed to be unspoken, you do seem to talk about it a lot.”

Sammo laughed.  “He’s got a point, Tai.  Nobody even knew that it  _was_  an unspoken rule ’til you started telling us all.”

Tai folded her arms and glared at them both.  “Fine, maybe it’s not an unspoken rule, but it’s just good sense.  If you’re going to say you’re bored, don’t do it while Master Yoda is around.  And  _especially_  don’t do it while you’re with other people, or you’ll  _all_  be given something to do.”

“I didn’t know Yoda was there,” Caleb protested.  “I’m not an idiot.”

Sammo shook his head.  “You could’ve fooled me,” he said.

Caleb narrowed his eyes at both of them, then let it go.  “Whatever,” he said.  “We’ll see who’s an idiot when we face the initiate trials next month and I pass easily, get snapped up by some master and whisked away to fight in the war as a padawan.”

Tai rolled her eyes.  “You do know that passing the trials doesn’t guarantee anything, don’t you?” she told him.  “It’s not like there’s a dozen masters eagerly watching us, hoping to snap up a padawan at the first opportunity.”

“It only takes one,” Caleb said.

Tai sighed.  “Yeah, look, don’t take this the wrong way Caleb, but the two of us will definitely be chosen before you.  Even if someone did want you, they’d probably have to wait a few years before you were allowed out, nobody’s going to put a kid your age on the battlefield.”

Caleb scowled.  “Hey, I’m not that much younger than you!”

“Anyway, last I heard,” she continued, “the Republic was winning the war, starting to take back more and more territory from the Separatists.  I bet peace’ll be declared any day.”

Caleb groaned internally and barely resisted the urge to throw something at his friend.  It wasn’t true.  Or at least, he didn’t  _think_  it was true.  It sounded like it could be, though.  “Don’t say that,” he said.

“What?  You want it to go on forever?”

Of course he didn’t, and he knew exactly how selfish he was being, but it wasn’t like him hoping for something would make it happen.   “Not  _forever_ ,” he said, “Just long enough.  I just want the chance to have a bit of excitement.”

“Hey, you should be careful making wishes like that,” Sammo told him.

Caleb folded his arms and glared.  “Why?  Don’t pretend you’re not hoping for the same thing, Sammo Quid.”

“But I’m not  _saying_  it, that’s the difference.  The Force has a way of misinterpreting those kinds of wishes.  Remember the Master that wished for peace and quiet, and then lost his hearing.”

“You’re kidding, right?”  Caleb laughed, not sure whether his friend actually believed the story, or whether he was just trying to make a point.  “That’s a tale they tell the younglings so they don’t think the Force is going to magically solve everything for them,” he told him.  “It didn’t really happen.”

“How do you know?”

Caleb shrugged.  “I asked,” he said.

“Why am I not surprised?”  Sammo rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Well, wishes aside,” Tai said with a smirk, “I’m sure you’ll get over not getting to fight.  And don’t worry, Sammo and I will tell you such great stories you’ll  _feel_  like you were there.”

Caleb glared at her, but didn’t give her the satisfaction of a response.

“Padawans never used to go off to war, you know.” she continued.  “The occasional battle, sure, but back before the Separatists got their dumb ideas, we’d have been sitting around imagining a future filled with following a master around, doing diplomacy and peacekeeping.  Just think, that’s going to be you.”

It was going to be all of them.  The war would end soon, the Republic would win, and things would return to the way they had been before.  And that wasn’t a bad thing at all.  Peace was what he wanted; how could it not be?  He just wanted the chance to fight first.

“We still are peacekeeping,” Sammo said.

Caleb shook his head.  “Not really.  It’s war, it can’t be peace _keeping_  if there isn’t peace.  It’s more like… peace-restoring.”

Tai considered that, then nodded.  “Fair point, maybe you’re not as much of an idiot as I thought,” she conceded.

“Whatever it is we’re doing out there,” Caleb said, “I’m going to be a part of it, so they’d better not restore the peace before I get my chance.”

Sammo shook his head.  “For the record,” he said, “before Tai decides to point it out; wishing to prolong the war is another thing you shouldn’t do when Master Yoda is around.”

Caleb rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, thanks for that,” he said.

“Know what’d be funny?” Tai asked.  “Caleb finally gets chosen as a padawan, heads on out for his first mission, and peace is declared while they’re en-route.”

“Hilarious.  Know what’d be even funnier?” Caleb shot back.  “ _You_  get chosen as a padawan.  By Master Yoda!”


	20. Bath Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan makes Chopper get that oil bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kimbachan requested: "Chopper taking an oil bath.... AGAINST HIS WILL.... oh the suffering!!!"

“You know, most droids actually enjoy this,” Kanan told Chopper.

Then most droids were idiots. Chopper had better things to do with his time. He let out a squeal of protest; no actual meaning behind it other than a sound of displeasure.

Kanan winced and covered his ears. Chopper chuckled to himself.

“Look, it’s going to happen,” Kanan told him, “so you might as well get used to the idea. You’re long overdue, and we have the facilities here on the new base, so this is going to become a regular thing.”

Unacceptable. He was C1-10P, he wasn’t some pampered protocol droid that enjoyed sitting around soaking up… He shrieked again, throwing in a few binary insults for good measure as he felt himself lift into the air without the use of his thrusters. Surely Kanan wouldn’t dare…

But he would. Chopper waved his manipulators wildly and threw out a stream of protests. To make matters worse, he wasn’t the only droid here; the Yavin 4 droids were standing around observing the spectacle. They were going to suffer for that.

He didn’t dare fire his thrusters to escape so close to the oil. It probably wasn’t combustible, but you never knew what pollutants a place like this might have included in their oil bath. He had no choice but to allow Kanan to Force-lift him into the air, and then down into the tub.

But he wasn’t going to go quietly. And if Kanan thought he could forget about this when it was over, he was going to be badly disappointed. Who was he to tell Chopper he needed a bath? It wasn’t like  _his_  personal hygiene was impeccable.

“Yeah, well, at least nobody complains that I leave a trail of dirt when I walk around,” Kanan told him, and dunked him into the oil.

The indignity! Chopper tried to complain, but even his sound emitters were submerged. It felt… it was warm. Not hot, but pleasantly heated. The oil quickly went to work lubricating joints and removing the layer of grime that he had been so proud of. It actually… it wasn’t that bad.

He rotated one of his manipulators, and it didn’t stick in the way it usually did; it simply moved, metal sliding against metal without any kind of resistance. It was good.

“There,” Kanan told him. “Not so bad after all, is it?”

Chopper grumbled to himself. Kanan was going to pay for this. He was going to regret the day he first came aboard the Ghost. He was going to beg for mercy when Chopper was done with him.

But first, Chopper was going to enjoy the rest of his bath.


	21. After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You need angst? How about Ezra finding Leia right before the Battle of Yavin (because he's still alive gdi) and talking to her in the wake of Alderaan getting destroyed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t stick to this exactly (sorry) this is set at a slightly different time. This is after the Battle of Yavin. I just thought it would have a little more impact to see them speaking on Lothal, and I couldn’t think of a way to get Leia there at the time you specified.

“You did it.”

The voice sounded familiar, but Ezra couldn’t place it.  He turned to see a woman of around his own age standing in front of him, looking all around her as though taking in the scene.  She smiled at him.

Still none-the-wiser, Ezra tried not to frown as he searched his memory.  She looked as familiar as she sounded, but he still couldn’t remember where he knew her from, or why.  She was dressed in white, with long brown hair tied in braids that encircled her head in a style that might have been chosen for how it looked, or because it was practical, he couldn’t tell .  She was beautiful, but there was a sadness about her despite the way that she smiled.

“You freed your world,” she clarified.  “I knew you would, ever since I first heard your transmission.”

Leia.  His memory finally caught up and made the right connection, and suddenly it was so obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized her right away.  Perhaps it had been the air of sadness around her that had never been there before.  Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan.  The world that had been destroyed; reduced to rubble by the Empire.

He had felt Alderaan die.  He hadn’t known at the time what he was feeling; a sudden burst of terror and pain that had reached him even on Lothal, followed by a stillness and a silence so complete that it felt for a moment as though the Force had simply ceased to be.  So many lives ended in seconds, with no warning, that final moment of fear and confusion amplified by billions.

When the news had finally reached him and he understood what he had felt, his first thought had been of Leia, of whether she had been there.  Whether he had felt her death along with that of her people.

He didn’t know what to say.  The Empire was in retreat, not destroyed, but so weakened that he could begin to believe that they really had a chance.  His world was free, and hers was gone.  She had probably never even realized it was in danger.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I… heard,” he didn’t want to tell her he had felt it, “about Alderaan.  I’m sorry.”

She turned away, as though she were suddenly unable to look at him, and Ezra didn’t know what else to say.

The words were inadequate.  There was nothing he could say that could possibly acknowledge the enormity of what she had lost.  He had spent a lot of time away from Lothal over the years, but wherever he was in the galaxy, he felt its draw.  He felt the connection to his people, to the history, to the ground itself.  It had changed a lot over the past few years, it had  _been_  changed by the Empire, almost beyond recognition, but it was still there, and with time and effort, one day it would return to what it had been.  Her world was gone.  Its people, it’s history, its legends, everything that it had been and ever would be.

What could he possibly say in the face of that much loss?

“I heard about your losses too,” Leia told him.  “The Empire has taken from all of us.”

Ezra nodded.  She was right, of course.

“I’m here with supplies,” she said.  “When I heard a ship was coming to Lothal, I decided to come along, see what the situation is like here.  From what I understand, this will probably be the last shipment you actually need.”

It was true, if things went according to plan, they probably wouldn’t need any more.  It had been a long winter, but spring had finally come and already the farmers that had returned to their fields were seeing the first green shoots of crops through soil that had thankfully not been drained of all nutrients.

It would take time before they were back to the production levels they had enjoyed before the Empire had arrived; before they were ready to trade with other worlds again, ship their grain supplies to other worlds and maybe even join in with the relief effort on worlds that had been even less fortunate, but they would get there.  In the meantime, it was good to know that they wouldn’t be relying on handouts for much longer.

“It looks so different than I remember,” Leia said, glancing around them.

“Yeah, me too,” he agreed.  It had been so long since he had seen blue skies and smelled clean air but he still remembered it, and one day he would have it again.  “But it’s better than it was a year ago though, trust me.”

“I do,” Leia assured him.  “Lothal’s in good hands. ”  She turned away, back to the ship where crates of supplies were already being offloaded to feed the population until that first crop was ready.  “Make sure you take care of it, Ezra,” she told him.

He would.  He would defend it to his dying breath, if that was what it took. 

They were luckier than a lot of worlds.  There were so many out there that were still occupied, but the recent losses that the Empire had taken meant that they no longer had the resources to keep control of a world that had learned how to fight back.

He hadn’t known at the time that the Resistance movement on Lothal had begun to make some impact, that the Empire had been testing a weapon with the power to destroy worlds.  A world that was too much trouble to keep control of could easily have been a target for such a weapon.  Lothal could have been the next Alderaan; it was a thought that had kept him up more than a few nights since he had heard, and one that had almost driven him back out into the galaxy to rejoin with the wider Rebellion.

He would get back up there one day, when the time was right; when he felt that he could do more for his world by rejoining the fight than by helping with the rebuilding effort.

Ezra opened his mouth to reply, to assure her that he would, that of course he would take care of his world, but she was already over by the ship helping the crew to offload the supplies.  He hurried after her; there was still a lot of work to do.


	22. First

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wish you would write a fic how was Hera and Kanan's first kiss?"

“How about we go on a little adventure,” Kanan suggested.  He was in the co-pilot’s seat of Hera’s ship, head turned in her direction as he watched her setting a course.  She turned to glance at him and he smiled.  “I know of a great little moon not too far from here, we can touch down on the outskirts of the one town there, hike through the woods, you come out on this secluded beach where the sand is so…”

“We have a pickup to make,” Hera told him.

Well, so much for that.  Kanan sighed, but didn’t push the issue.  He had only been on the Ghost for a couple of weeks, nowhere near long enough for Hera to start to see him as a permanent fixture.  A few wrong moves could easily see him dropped off at the nearest planetoid.  Which would be fine, of course, but he was enjoying himself; he wanted to see what was going to happen.

“Maybe afterward?” he tried.

She shook her head.  “Afterward, we have to drop it off on Lothal, and there might be something to take back again.”

He frowned.  He hadn’t signed on to this to become a freighter pilot carting supplies between two insignificant places that he’d never heard of before.  Hell, he wasn’t even the pilot, he was the guy that sat and watched the pilot, and occasionally got an electric shock from her mentally unstable droid.

As though sensing his disappointment, Hera turned away from the controls to look at him.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “You’re right, it does sound nice.  We should have some time in a few days.”

Kanan smiled, surprised to find that he was actually looking forward to it.  A hike through the woods wasn’t his usual idea of fun, it had just been the first thing that had come to mind that Hera might enjoy, after he had dismissed a pub crawl through the less reputable part of Lothal’s Capital City.  Although, it wasn’t the hike itself that he was anticipating, but the potential reward at the end of it.

“If we time it right, we can arrive in time for the sunset over the ocean,” he said.  “Most beautiful thing I ever saw.”  He paused, then shook his head, looking meaningfully into her eyes.  “Second most beautiful,” he amended.

She held his gaze for a moment, then leaned toward him.  Kanan leaned in too, closing the distance between them.  He closed his eyes moments before their lips touched.

Something hit his nose.  Something hard and smooth and definitely not what he had been expecting.  His eyes sprung open to see that Hera had turned her head and he had bumped his face against the headset she was wearing.  She was reaching over the control panel to push a button on the co-pilot’s side.  She turned to look at him, confused.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Uh…”  he felt his eyes widen in panic and glanced quickly around the cockpit for any kind of a distraction, he found nothing.  “I was reaching over there,” he said, pointing vaguely in her direction, “I guess you were reaching over this way and neither of us noticed.”  He grinned, growing in confidence when she didn’t instantly call him on his mistake.  Either she really didn’t know what had happened, or she was going to let it slide.

Hera nodded.  “Reaching.  Right.”

She smiled knowingly, and Kanan was struck again by how beautiful she was.  If he could only see one thing for the rest of his life, he thought he might choose her and be happy.  Of course, that would get a bit awkward if he ever had to pull out his blaster and start firing.  But then maybe he could close his eyes or something.  If he couldn’t get rid of the Force — and experience had taught him that he couldn’t — he could at the very least make it work to his advantage.

He noticed she was looking at him strangely.  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Absolute nonsense,” he assured her.

Her smile didn’t falter.  “Sounds about right.”

She raised a hand in the air, taking great care to ensure it caught his eye, then reached forward, to the other side of the console, leaning in as she did, moving her face closer to his.  She paused, her lips so close to his own that he could feel her breath.

Kanan hesitated, not wanting to be fooled again.  “Wait,” he said.  “So… what’s happening now?”

She kissed him, and somehow it managed to take him by surprise.  Until the moment their lips actually touched he realized he had been convinced that she was teasing him, he hadn’t actually expected anything to happen.  He reacted a moment too late, trying to respond a second out of sync.  He leaned in, and his teeth grazed against hers.

And then it was over.

Hera backed away, sitting back in her own seat again.  Kanan forced himself to take a breath that he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

“Well,” Hera said.  She straightened her clothing and turned her attention back to the flight plan she had been setting.  “That was…”

“Awkward?”  Kanan suggested.  “Excruciating?  Painful?”

She smiled again.  “It wasn’t  _that_  bad.”

“It was,” he assured her.  “Believe me, by  _my_  standards, it was bad.”  It hadn’t been his fault.  Well, yes, it had been, but there was something about her, something that made him want to impress her, and of course it backfired.

“Oh,” her eyes widened in mock surprise.  “High opinion of yourself, then?”

He wasn’t sure if that would be a good thing or not in this situation.  He shrugged.  “I’m just honest,” he told her.

She shook her head, still smiling.  “Well then, in the interests of honesty, yes, that was the most awkward first kiss I ever had.”

Well, that was the best thing she could have said.  “Good,” he told her.

“Good?”  She frowned.  “Why is that good?”

He smoothed his beard with one hand.  “Because you said ‘first’,” he told her, and grinned.  “That implies that there’s going to be more.”


	23. Close Shave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan cuts his hair and beard.  
> (inspired by the new trailer)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by @pomrania during a chat about Kanan’s new haircut the other night. This is mostly silly, but a little bit serious.

His hair was on the ground.  Still contained inside the band he had used for years to tie it back, it lay discarded at his feet.  His neck itched and tickled where he had cut the newly shorter hair shorter still and it had fallen away, getting stuck inside his clothing.  He had carefully pulled locks of hair out away from his face before slicing through it with the knife and allowing it to fall where it may.  It had pulled a little; the blade too blunt for haircutting.  He didn’t mind, he had endured worse.

The beard had been more difficult.  A close shave was impossible given the equipment.  Not only that, but this was the first time he had even attempted to shave without his sight.  He had trimmed the beard that he had allowed to grow in the wake of Malachor, carefully tracing the ends with his fingers and cutting millimeters at a time, but he hadn’t so much as touched a razor since before he had lost his sight.  

Not that he was using a razor now.

He was beginning to think that this might have been a mistake.

Too late to do anything about it now though, he was committed to it.  He dragged the blade across dry, unprepared skin, almost glad that he wouldn’t have to look at the result.

His hair was on the ground.  The ponytail that he had spent years growing, that had become his disguise, a way to distance himself from Caleb, from the boy that he had been.

He wasn’t hiding anymore.

He knelt down and picked up the ponytail.  It felt surprisingly heavy in his hand, his head felt oddly light, like a burden had been lifted.  With his free hand, he carefully ran his fingers through his new, shorter locks.

After they rescued Hera, he was going to be in a lot of trouble.

* * *

He had anticipated the response he was going to get when he emerged from the cave and showed the rest of the crew what he had done.  What he hadn’t anticipated was how nervous he was going to feel beforehand.  Kanan raised a hand to his head and touched the hair again.  It wasn’t completely even, he could tell that by touch.  If he had more time, and either a sharper blade or perhaps a razor blade or a pair of scissors, he would have been able to do a better job.  It still felt right though.

The air moved around his ears in a way he remembered from his youth; it was strange, like stepping back in time, like he was Caleb Dume again.  And maybe he was, in a way.  Little by little, he had cast off the disguise he had hidden behind for so many years.  He was becoming the Jedi he had always been supposed to be.

He took a deep breath and allowed the ponytail still clutched in his hand to drop from his fingers, discarded.

Time to face the music.

* * *

The silence that greeted him when he stepped outside to face the rest of the crew was so absolute that he actually needed to reach out with the Force to check that they were actually there, that he hadn’t imagined their presence.  He smiled, trying not to appear nervous.  “Is it that good?” he asked.

“Kanan, what…” Ezra stopped before finishing the thought.

Kanan brushed at his neck with his hands, still trying to remove stray hairs from his clothing.  “Long story,” he said.  “I’ll tell you about it another time.”

“Right,” Ezra said, sounding a little unsure.  “Well, on the bright side, you don’t look anything like your wanted poster anymore.  The Empire’ll be looking for Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight, not some crazy guy that cuts his own hair in the dark with a blunt knife.”

“Ezra!” Sabine admonished, quick and quietly, most likely accompanied by an elbow to the ribs.

“Not like he had a lot of choice about doing it in the dark,” Zeb added.

Ezra hesitated, then sucked in a nervous breath.  “Okay, but you’ll notice he’s not denying ‘crazy guy’ or ‘with a blunt knife’?”

“Shut up,” Sabine told him.

Kanan reached up and touched his head.  He had a feeling he was going to be doing that a lot over the next few days, assuming he survived what was to come.  This was going to take a lot of getting used to.  Just as long as he didn’t go back to his old tell, the one that had seen him tie up his hair for the first time all those years ago.

“It’s not  _that_  bad, is it?” he asked.

The response was a stream of mechanical laughter from Chopper.  The clang of a boot on metal followed, and silence descended again.

“You do realize that if we survive the rescue attempt, Hera’s going to murder you, don’t you?” Zeb asked.

Kanan frowned, and folded his arms to prevent himself from touching his hair again.  Maybe he shouldn’t have done this now.  Maybe it was going to be too much of a distraction when they needed their heads in the game.  He was certainly distracted, by the feeling of the wind around his head, moving his hair in a way that he hadn’t felt in years.

“We’re dreaming, right?” Ezra asked.  “I mean, it’s some kind of mass hallucination, or I’m having a Force vision, or something?”

“Shut up, Ezra,” Sabine said again.  She stepped forward and grabbed Kanan by the arm.  “You, come with me,” she said.  “I know we have to rescue Hera, but there’s no way I’m going to let you do it looking like that.”

Kanan shook his head.  “Is it really that bad?” he asked.

Sabine hesitated.  “Uh, no,” she told him.  “Of course not.  It’s great.  I’m just going to neaten it up a bit, okay?  And then it’ll grow back.”

Kanan sighed, but followed her away from the rest of the group.

“Zeb’s right, you know,” Sabine said when they were out of earshot.  “I’m going to do my best, but you’d better make sure Hera knows it wasn’t my idea, I’m just working with what I’ve got.”

Kanan grimaced.  “I’ll make sure you don’t get the blame.  Just do what you can, okay?”

He was definitely going to be in trouble when this was done.


	24. Touching the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hera's reaction to Kanan's new hairstyle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short ‘Kanan’s hair’ ficlet. I’m obviously never going to be able to let this go, am I?

Kanan brushed a hand through his hair.  It felt strange, at the same time both familiar and not.  Like touching the past.  He wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet.  At the time it had felt like the right thing to do, now, he wasn’t so sure.

It would help if he could see it for himself.  The reactions of people who had seen it so far were… not encouraging.

Well, like Sabine had told him, it would grow back.  He could cast off Caleb once again, if he chose to do so.

“What’s wrong?”

He turned instinctively at the sound of Hera’s voice, not really expecting to see her, but lost enough in the past that there was a hint of surprise at the nothing before his eyes.  Caleb wasn’t used to darkness, he had always hated being unable to see; even in training, he had found it restrictive and frustrating.

But he wasn’t Caleb.  Not any more than he had been yesterday, or the day before.

“Kanan?”

Hera was closer now.  She sat down beside him on the ground, so close that they were almost touching, but she didn’t touch.  Not yet.  She was keeping her distance, making sure he was okay.

He shook his head.  “It’s nothing.  Just…” He forced his hand to move down, away from his hair.  He didn’t want to go back to old habits.  “Do you really hate it?”

He heard Hera breathe a laugh, something between amusement, and relief that it wasn’t something worse that was preying on his mind.  “Sorry about that,” she told him.  “Hate might have been a strong word.  It was a surprise.  It’s… different.”

He smiled at that, a little awkwardly, and found himself running his fingers through the short strands one more time.  Hera had never known Caleb Dume.  She had known of his existence, but the two of them had never met; would never meet.  “It’s who I used to be,” he said softly.  “Who I was supposed to be.”

“Caleb,” she said.  Her voice was barely a whisper.

“But I’m not him,” he assured her.  “It’s still me.  He might be a little closer to the surface right now, but that’s all.”  He hesitated.  “Is that okay?”

She reached out slowly and brushed a hand across the smooth skin of his face, then up, into the shortest part of his hair.  Sabine had done a good job neatening it up for him, he had spent enough time exploring it with his hands to know that it was neat and even.  He itched to ask what it looked like, but there was no point; no answer anybody could give would be sufficient, he would have to content himself with his imagination.

“You look so much younger,” Hera told him.

“Hey, are you telling me I looked old?”

She laughed and continued to move her hand through his hair, her fingers closing among the short strands, tugging them into parallel rows on the top of his head.  It felt strange.  She had run her fingers through his hair before, when it was long, playing with it, or teasing out tangles as they lay sleepily side by side at the end of a long day.  This wasn’t like that; it felt good, but in a new way.

“I think I could get used to it,” she told him eventually.

It was strange, but he hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear that until she said the words.  He smiled again, feeling happier and more at peace than he had in years.  It wouldn’t last; it never did.  That didn’t matter.  In this one moment, they were together, and everything was right with the world.

“Anyway,” he said, as casually as he could, “it’s only hair, right?  Maybe I should commit to this thing completely, shave it all off.”

Hera’s fingers stopped moving over his scalp and he sensed a mixture of horror and amusement from her.  “I know you’re joking,” she told him, “but if you even think that again, I’m going to have Sabine dye it orange while you sleep and make sure nobody tells you.”


	25. Literacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hera finds out that Ezra can't read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Idk if you are still taking requests, but I have this headcannon that Ezra is illiterate (since he was alone since 7 and grew up on the streets) so could you maybe write a fic where the crew finds out and Space mom Hera teaches him how to read?"_
> 
> ((So… I’m hoping this is kinda what you were wanting. I had it so that Ezra _can_ read though, just not well. I tried to do it the other way but I couldn’t make it work. I’m imagining him with maybe the same reading comprehension as my niece, she turned seven last month, and she’ll read random words that she sees aloud to me, but often she gets them wrong.))

“What went wrong?” Hera asked.  She looked at both of them questioningly, not angry, but worried; concerned.  She needed an answer so that they could ensure that, whatever it was, it didn’t happen again.

Ezra swallowed and tried to sink a little further into his seat.  “Nothing,” he said.

Sabine was waiting for an explanation too; her eyes bore into him, making it obvious that if there  _had_  been an issue, she didn’t think it was with her.

Ezra refused to give in under the pressure. Nothing had gone wrong; they had executed the plan perfectly, and they had both gotten out in one piece.

Sabine frowned at his lack of a response.  “Seriously, Ezra?” she asked.  “ _Something_  must’ve happened in the control room for you to take that long.  You expect us to believe you just decided to stare at the button for half an hour before you decided to press it?”  She brushed debris off her armor and rubbed at a scratch with the tip of her finger, presumably weighing up whether or not the paintwork would need to be resprayed.

Ezra folded his arms defensively.  “It wasn’t ‘half an hour’!” he said.  “And there wasn’t one button either, there were about twenty on that one panel, and three other almost identical panels too.  I had to make sure I got the right one.”

“They were  _labeled_ ,” Sabine countered.  “It’s not like I was asking you to become an expert, you just push the button marked ‘ignition’, and get the kriff out of there.  I mean, you can read, right?  How hard could it have been?”

“Sabine…” Hera said warningly, remarking on her tone rather than her words.

Ezra shook his head angrily and looked away, down at the floor.  He didn’t want to look at her — at either one of them — to do so might give him away.  He was just glad that Kanan wasn’t there.  After three months of training he still wasn’t sure  _exactly_  what a Jedi was capable of, but Kanan seemed to have a kind of intuition about things like this.

“Sorry,” he said, and hoped that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t.  “Yeah, well,” Sabine continued, “Lucky for you we still had enough time to get out of there before the whole thing blew.  I mean, I’m all for living dangerously, but that was taking it to the next level.”

Ezra felt the heat rush to his cheeks.  “I said I was sorry,” he told her.  He continued to stare down at the floor.  Not far from the tip of his boot there was a speck of red paint.  He concentrated on it, willing the conversation to be over.

Silence filled the room, growing worse by the second.

“Ezra?” Sabine said.  Her tone had grown softer now.  Hesitant, and with a hint of concern.  “You…  _can_  read, can’t you?  I mean, that isn’t why…”

He didn’t give her the chance to finish; he got to his feet and bolted from the room.

* * *

 

Ezra had never been more happy to find the quarters that he shared with Zeb empty.  He ascended the small ladder into his bunk, pressed his back to the wall and tried to make himself as small as possible.  He had been tempted to hide; to squeeze himself into the ventilation shafts, or some other place where even if they did come looking for him, he could keep moving.  But what would be the point?  It would only delay the inevitable.

They left it a long time, longer than he had thought they would.  Trying to decide what to do about him, he assumed.  Then the knock on the door finally came, Ezra had expected Kanan, or possibly Sabine with an awkward apology.  It was Hera.

She folded her arms, and smiled at him.  “Can I come in?” she asked.

She waited on the other side of the door, not trying to walk through until he told her she could.  By way of a reply, he backed off several steps, allowing her clear entry into the room.  He leaned against the wall.  “I can read,” he told her.

Hera looked him up and down, and it like she was weighing him up.  Ezra fought the urge to back off further, sidestepping along the wall to put more distance between them.  After three months on the Ghost, it didn’t feel quite so precarious anymore, but there were still moments when he couldn’t help but worry they would decide they didn’t need him anymore and throw him away.

This might be it.

“You’ve were seven when the Empire took your parents,” Hera told him.  “Of course you didn’t get a real education.  I can’t believe I never thought about it until now.”

“I  _can_  read,” he insisted.  “I can.  I’m not lying.  I wouldn’t do that.”

Hera placed a hand on his arm and looked him in the eye.  “I know you wouldn’t,” she assured him, but that wasn’t the end of it.  She was waiting, expecting more.

He sighed, defeated.  There was no way he was going to get out of this without giving something away, it might as well be the truth.  “I  _can_  read,” he repeated.  “I just… can’t do it well.  I guess it takes me a little longer than most people.  And some words just don’t make any sense no matter how long you spend sounding them out.  There just happened to be a lot of those on that panel.”

Hera’s eyes seemed to look through him; into him.  She nodded.  “You need to tell us things like that when they’re relevant,” she told him.  “It’s something we can work around, but we can only do that if we know.  Okay?”

Ezra frowned.  She was being so… reasonable.  Honestly, he would feel better if she was angry with him for lying.  As it was, it just seemed like she felt sorry for him, and he didn’t think he could stand that.

“Are you going to tell the others?” he asked.  Kanan was okay, he could cope with that, but Zeb?   _Chopper_?  He would never hear the end of it.  Of course she was going to tell them, though.  She was right; they needed to know.  He had proved that very effectively today.

“No,” Hera said.  “Not if you don’t want me to.  I’ve talked to Sabine, and she won’t say anything either.”

He stared at her in confusion.  “But you just said…”

“That we need to know  _when it’s relevant_.  If that happens, I’m counting on  _you_  to tell them.  But it might never happen, because I’m hoping we’ll be able to get you up to speed long before then.”

Ezra frowned, relief mixing with confusion.

“If you’re up for it, that is?” Hera asked.

“For…” Ezra asked

“I’m no teacher,” she told him.  “But I do think I can help, if it’s what you want.  I’ve put something together that we can use, books you can read, simple ones at first.  We’ll take it slowly, but I think we can get you there.”

From a pocket, she produced a small datapad and switched it on.  She handed it to him and Ezra looked down at the screen.  It displayed a simple, short sentence.  Ezra stared down at it, his eyes drifted over each letter in turn and his lips carefully sounded out the words.

_“Family helps one another.”_

He looked up at Hera, for a moment unable to bring himself to speak.  “I…” he said.  He felt tears pricking the corners of his eyes.  Embarrassed, he rubbed them away in the futile hope that she wouldn’t notice.  “Thank you,” he said.

Hera put her arms around him and pulled him closer.  “Any time,” she promised him.

She released him slowly, and took back the datapad, then switched it to a new screen.  “So,” she said.  “Ready to get to work?”


	26. Trustworthy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post 'The Lost Commanders' and 'Relics of the Old Republic'. There is a clone aboard the ship, and Kanan can;t bring himself to relax.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Hi. I was wondering if you could do a fic set around the time of “The Lost Commanders” episode in season 2 about Kanan dealing with PTSD in seeing the clones again. Kind of an introspection type thing maybe?"_

Kanan let out an exhausted sigh as he sat on Hera’s bunk.  He slumped forward, resting his elbow on his knee, almost doubled over.

“You look like you need to sleep for a week,” Hera told him.  She sat down next to him and placed a hand gently on his back.  “It’s okay, go to your quarters; go to bed.  We can do this in the morning.”

He shook his head.  She was right, he was exhausted, and he needed sleep.  He also knew that it wasn’t going to happen, not tonight.  “I’m fine,” he said.  “I just want to get this mission report done, then I can start to forget about the whole thing.”

Hera frowned, but took out her datapad and handed it to him.  “Fine,” she said.  “Why don’t you get started on the basic outline and I’ll make some caf.   _You_  might not be tired from the battle with the Empire, but I’ve been crawling around the Ghost doing repairs with Chopper all day.”

Kanan took the offered datapad and stared down at the screen.  The page blurred and doubled before his eyes and he blinked to clear his vision.  She was right, he was too tired for this; he wasn’t going to be able to think, much less form coherent sentences and type them up.  It didn’t matter, he needed it out of the way.  “Why do we even need to do this?” he asked.  “Mission reports?  We never had to do any of this before we joined up with Sato and the rest of the Rebellion.”

“No?” Hera asked.  She rolled her eyes and shook her head.  “You’re right,  _we_  didn’t.   _I_  did.”

Right.  Because she had been taking orders from them all along, keeping secrets from the rest of the crew in order to protect them.  He frowned.  After all this time, he had found himself a part of a military organization again.  It was all he had ever wanted when he had been a kid; now, the idea of it just made him feel sick to his stomach.

He rubbed a hand across his face as though he could erase some of the exhaustion.  “They called me ‘General’ today,” he said.

“Who did?”

“The clones.  One of them, anyway.”

Hera nodded.  “It makes sense.  That’s what the Jedi were during the war, right?  Their military rank.  That’s what the clones called them.  Fighting alongside you, it must have reminded him of that time.”

Kanan felt himself shudder.  “He’s not the only one,” he said.  He had corrected the clone, only for the rank to be amended to ‘Commander’.  That had felt worse, somehow, because he had never been a general.  To hear his former rank spoken again by someone with that voice; that face.  It had felt uncomfortable and wrong, and it had plunged his own mind back in time too.

Hera reached for the datapad and he realized that he had still been staring down at the blank template of the mission report.  He allowed her to take it from him and place it on the bunk next to her.  “I’ll do the report,” she told him.  “You’ve given me the basics, I’ll get any more details I need from Ezra or the others.”  She took his hand in hers.  “Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said instinctively.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head.  “There’s nothing to say.  Dragging up the past isn’t going to make anything better.  I just wish…” he stopped, reconsidering what he had been about to say.  He sighed.  “I know he’s going to be useful for the Rebellion, and I know Ahsoka considers him a friend, but I just wish he hadn’t chosen to stay.”

He was glad, of course, that they had gone back and saved the clones, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he had let them die.  He just wished that had been the end of it.  That they had been able to go their separate ways.

Another wave of exhaustion washed over him, and his eyes tried to close.  He fought them, and won.  “I can’t sleep,” he said.  “Not while he’s so close.  I  _know_  the clones didn’t have any choice when they attacked the Jedi, but they did it.  What if…” he stopped.  He was being irrational.  Anyway, Rex and the others had removed their control chips.

Or so they had told him.  Did a tiny scar on the clone’s head really mean anything?  He had fought in a war; the scar could have come from anywhere.

“He wouldn’t be here if Ahsoka didn’t trust him,” Hera said.  “They’re friends.”

Kanan nodded.  “I trusted the clones that served under my Master.  I thought they were  _my_  friends.  They murdered her like she meant nothing to them.  They  _hunted_  me.  They took everything from me.  My Master, my future, everything I’d ever known, everyone I’d ever cared about, gone in seconds.  I was a kid, and suddenly I was on the run on a planet I didn’t know, I couldn’t rest for even a moment because if I did, they might find me, and…” he stopped, unable to continue. 

Even now, safe aboard the Ghost so many years later, he could feel his heart pounding, adrenaline flooding his bloodstream.  He wasn’t safe.   _Ezra_  wasn’t safe.  Ezra didn’t know what they were capable of.  Ezra trusted them, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be to turn his back on them.

Hera’s arms were wrapped around him now.  He hadn’t even noticed her move, so lost in the past.  A hand rhythmically stroked his head, fingers tangling in his hair.  “It’s okay,” she whispered.  “It’s okay, you’re safe.”

But he wasn’t.  None of them were.

“These clones aren’t the ones you remember,” Hera told him.  “I know they look the same, but they’re not.”  Her fingers started to work on the buckles that held his pauldron in place at his shoulder.  She removed it carefully and placed it on the ground next to the bunk.

He sucked in a deep breath.  He knew they weren’t the same clones, but it didn’t matter; they were still clones.  “I know that,” he said.  “It makes no difference.  Even if I trusted him completely — and I don’t, I  _can’t_.  I want to, but I can’t — even if I could, I find myself back there every time I hear him speak.”

“It’ll get better,” she assured him.

Kanan doubted that.  He passively allowed her to remove the other pieces of his armor that covered his arm, trying not to dwell on how exposed it made him feel.  That done, she placed one hand on each of his shoulders and pushed, gently guiding him down onto the bunk.  Seeing an opportunity to change the subject, he smiled up at her suggestively.  “I’m not  _really_  in the mood, but hey, if you insist…”

Hera swatted his newly-exposed shoulder with her hand.  Finally, she unhooked the lightsaber he was still wearing at his belt.  He watched closely, wanting to know exactly where it was if he needed to grab it in the night.  She put it, too, on the ground next to the bunk.  “Problems always seem worse at night,” she told him.  “Go to sleep.  It’ll look better in the morning, I promise.”

He hesitated.  He knew she was right, but how could he sleep with the clone so close?  If he closed his eyes, switched off the light, if he let down his guard…

“I’m here,” Hera told him.  She lay down next to him.  He shuffled up to make room, pressing his back against the wall.  They lay face to face, bodies pressed together in the narrow bunk.  She smiled at him, and turned out the light, plunging the room into darkness.  “I’m here,” she said again.

He had been alone on Kaller, he wasn’t alone here.  He put his arms around her and pulled her a little closer.  She was right, in the light of day things would feel better.  Or they wouldn’t, but at least he would have a night’s sleep behind him and wouldn’t be looking at the world through an exhausted haze.

He finally allowed his eyes to close; listening to Hera’s slow breathing and feeling it in the rise and fall of her chest against his, he felt himself begin to relax.

Maybe it would work out, maybe not.  Whatever happened, he wasn’t a kid anymore; he wasn’t alone, and he was prepared this time.  If anything went wrong, he would be ready for it.  This time, he would be able to protect the people he loved.

One thing was certain though; he was never going to be able to completely trust that clone…


	27. Night vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I don’t think you’re into Sabezra? But if you could find it in your heart to write that “I wish I could see you” scene but with Sabine and Ezra I would be forever in your debt."_
> 
> I mean, it's... kinda similar?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been in my asks since whenever it was this episode aired, so I’m sorry this has taken so long. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do with it, or if I should do anything with it at all. You’re right, I don’t ship Sabezra, but I don’t hate it either. I kind of toyed with the idea of doing a jokey and sarcastic reply to this, but that seemed rude, and I considered doing something set in the ‘in one piece’ AU, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the AU in that direction. Because you never specified who wanted to see whom, I also considered switching it around and putting those words in Sabine’s mouth, and creating a (angsty or maybe even funny) reason why.
> 
> I did none of those. Maybe I’ll write them anyway sometime though. In the meantime, I hope this is okay.

It was very dark in the alley.  Of course, it was very dark everywhere.  The people of this world had developed extremely sensitive eyes due to the fact that the sun never truly rose here.  Even the night sky appeared almost completely black, devoid of moons, only a smattering of stars, invisible now due to cloud cover.

That would change soon enough.  If the Empire were allowed to gain a real foothold here, the stars would become permanently obscured by a layer of pollution, and electric lighting would be installed everywhere.  The population would be forced to adapt or leave.  But they weren’t there yet, and the moment he had turned off the flashlight, Ezra couldn’t see a thing.

Sabine pushed him hard against the wall, almost knocking the air from his lungs.  He could feel her breath against his neck; a reminder of how much taller he had gotten the past few months.  They stood completely still, both willing the Stormtroopers to walk past.  Praying they wouldn’t turn their flashlights to check down the alley.  If someone turned a light on them, they would be exposed with nowhere to run.

Footsteps grew louder and then faded away as the two Stormtroopers continued on their way with no idea the Rebels they were hunting were so close.  Finally, after a few minutes of silence, Ezra allowed himself to take a deep breath.  He felt Sabine’s body, still pressed against his, relax as he did.

“That was close,” she whispered.

Ezra nodded.  Too close.  If they had waited a second longer before diving down that alley, they would have been spotted.  He unhooked his flashlight from his belt and moved to press the switch to turn it on.  Sabine stopped him with a hand covering his.

“Too risky,” she said.  “They could come back.  A light around here will draw them to our position.”

She was right.  Ezra put it away.  “So how do we get back to the Ghost?” he whispered.

Sabine moved half a step away from him, no longer crushing her armor against his.  He felt her move as she removed her helmet.  “You’re a Jedi,” she said.  “Kanan manages it, right?”

“That’s not…” Ezra shook his head.  She was right, of course.  On both counts.  But that didn’t mean he could do this.  It had taken Kanan months to learn.  He blinked into the complete blackness before his eyes, knowing Sabine was there, sensing her in the Force, hearing the quiet sound of her breathing, yet completely unable to see her.  It was unnerving.

“You’ll do fine,” she whispered.  “I believe in you.”

Ezra touched the wall and reached out with the Force, getting a vague impression of the world around him.  He had no idea where to go.  Left at the end of the alley, but then..?  He took Sabine’s hand in his and took a hesitant step.

“Ezra?” she said.

“I… I’m fine.”  He couldn’t do this.  He needed the flashlight.  He needed to see, even if just for a second, to get his bearings.  He didn’t know how Kanan could stand it.  Darkness pressed hard against his eyes and he  _needed_  to see.

“Hey,” Sabine said.  He felt her free hand on his face, moving behind his head, gloved fingers running through his hair.  “What’s wrong?”

He imagined the expression on her face, concern, worry, curiosity, he wasn’t sure which.  He wanted to see her, to find out.  The Force should be able to tell him, but it didn’t.  “I just really wish I could see you right now,” he said.

Sabine laughed; a slight hitch in her breathing, barely audible.  If he didn’t know her so well, he would have missed it.  Lips brushed gently against his, the smallest of kisses before she broke away.  “Relax, it’s just a bit of darkness,” she said.  “You can see as much of me as you like, when we get back.”

Her hand broke contact with his as she pulled her helmet back over her head.  She grabbed him again and tugged gently.

“This way, come on.”

She walked out of the alley with no hesitancy in her steps and turned to the left.  Ezra followed her passively for a few moments, then stopped.  “Sabine, wait.  How are you…” he blinked, willing his eyes to adjust.  Not surprisingly, they refused.  They had been here for hours, if his eyes hadn’t grown accustomed to the darkness yet, they weren’t going to.  There simply wasn’t enough light for a human to see by.

But then how was Sabine…?

“Night vision,” she said.  “Built into my helmet visor.  Did you seriously not realize that?  You thought you  _really_  needed to lead us back?”

“Uh…” Ezra said, suddenly self-conscious under the revelation that she could see him when he couldn’t see her.  He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair.  “Yeah, of course.  I knew that.”

Sabine sighed and Ezra imagined her eyes rolling behind her helmet.  “Suuure you did.  C’mon, lets get out of here before those Stormtroopers come back.”


	28. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hera is given something she had assumed long gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a post on Tumblr about how I wished Jacen could inherit Kanan's lightsaber, someone suggested some random person could have found it on Lothal and handed it back to the Ghost crew. As unlikely as that is, I want it to happen, and so here it is.

“I found this.”

Hera turned in surprise at the unexpected voice. It was a kid. He was maybe eight, human, with dark colored hair just a little too long. He was so skinny she would probably be able to see his ribs if he wasn’t wearing that oversized shirt that looked like a hand-me-down from some older sibling or family friend.

He reminded her, in a slightly jarring way, of Ezra. Of Ezra as he might have been, years earlier, long before they had known him. She looked around, searching for any sign of family, or protector for the boy, and found nobody.

He extended his arm a little further, holding the object up for her to inspect, and the sense of shock deepened. It wasn’t, as she had first assumed, some piece of scrap metal found among the wreckage. It was… but it couldn’t be.

Kanan’s lightsaber.

“It still works,” the kid said. “I tried it out. I mean, I know I shouldn’t have, but… anyway. My brother said some of you are Jedis, so I figured maybe one of you lost it, or maybe not, but you could give it to one of them anyway.”

Hera’s words caught in her throat, and she felt her eyes begin to burn as she reached out and allowed her fingers to close around the object.

The kid could have made a fortune selling it, or he could have kept it, used it to protect himself. Instead, he had chosen to bring it home to her.

“So will you?” the kid asked. “Will you give it to one of the Jedis?”

If only she could, but they had no Jedi. Not anymore. Her other hand moved unconsciously, touching her belly where the bump had barely begun to show. She nodded. “I will,” she promised. “Thank you.”

The kid grinned widely, and before Hera could reach into her bag to hand him something in payment for the gift he had given her, he turned, and disappeared into the rubble that had resulted from Thrawn’s bombardment.

She looked down at the object in her hands, that she had thought she would never see again, and was overcome by a mixture of grief and joy. “Thank you,” she said again, sending the message out into the Force. She didn’t know whether it was a trick of the mind, or perhaps something to do with the life growing inside her, but she could feel Kanan’s presence, as closely as if he was standing before her.

Their child would never meet his father in person, but he would know him, through the stories that she and the others told, and through the traces of himself that Kanan had left behind in the world. And now, he would have this too.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.

**Author's Note:**

> The ask box over at [my tumblr](http://prepare4trouble.tumblr.com) is always open for prompts, if there's something you'd like to see here, just let me know. Or leave it in a comment here.


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